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She was selected by Roger Reeves as a finalist for the 2024 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. Executive Editor of Nashville Review , Mayes is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at Vanderbilt University. still go on, writing lyric chicken scratch  over your chemistry notes, cleaning out Tattered Cover’s poetry How kind  of her to acknowledge the fissure of your  hands cracking the spines of poetry books

Her work, which includes poetry, essays, and short stories, explores themes such as the complexities

Jude and was named a finalist for Palette Poetry's 2023 Resistance and Resilience Prize.

A Pushcart Prize nominee and Collaborating Fellow at The Poetry Lab, she’s performed across the U.S. forthcoming with Plenitude , Fahmidan , Peach Fuzz , Lucky Jefferson , Just Femme and Dandy , Button Poetry

Return Home  (Counterpoint Press), a short story collection,  Kinds of Grace  (Flowersong Press), a poetry Her newest poetry collection VERSUS will be released by Texas Review Press in March 2027. received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (prose), Kimbilio (fiction), CantoMundo (poetry

Sharyon is currently featured in several commercial spots and an upcoming episode of “Mayor of Kingstown Her first feature film project, ”Black Joy Always Wins” and her first short film screenplay “Daughters

They’re in shadow, but you can still see every detail of their features. The expressions. Willie watched his friend’s familiar, still features.  “You saw combat?” asked Barry.

Octavia Washington is an emerging writer who graduated from Carleton College with a degree in English and is currently a Dramaturgy MFA student at Columbia University. She lives in New York and can be found shopping until dropping, probably. Follow Octavia on Instagram and Twitter . babybreath   CHARACTERS Angel, a black woman in her 20s The Husband, older than her     Setting: The Bed Time: None in the Void   Angel is lying horizontal on the bed in her pink robe and bonnet, one leg exposed. She keeps rubbing at her temples. Her sheets are undone, unmade, fraying; every second away from her temple goes to its exposed strings. Her husband is sitting in a chair across from her, monitoring for any worrying signs — well, more worrisome than her usual. She’s surrounded by dial-up telephones, receivers as far as the eye can see. Another ring — and no answer. The phones get bigger and smaller all around her; they shrink and balloon, and she follows their lead with her movements.   Angel hears a click after each name. No telling if the husband can hear them too.   Angel Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. These are the first instruments of the baby machine. I have to take a nap but I can’t stop thinking and I need you to help me carry my thoughts. Okay, can you do that? I need you to carry my names and then we’ll all find some peace in dreams. Okay, can you promise that? Alright. I have - pass me that. (He passes her the crumbled piece of paper on the floor; she unravels it.) These are my physicians but I don’t think they went to school for medicine. I think they’re fake. Don’t look at me like that. Forget the degrees painting the walls and the pillows that devour and the games in the waiting room and the snotty receptionist at the desk and the fancy Ivy Leagues of it all. They majored and degreed in Baby Killer MD. And now I have something to say. I stand and shout (Angel tries to stand up but falls back down) , I sit and shout: I have something to say. I have -- what was I -- I’m sorry, I’m not -- oh, Kolin.   That was the first stop. All aboard the abortion express. Sorry. That’s not funny, I know you don’t like when I make, when I make light of things like — dark things. I just meant that he was my pediatrician and that’s why I saw him first. Kolin’s hair went like (she gestures)  whoosh; he had the quaff, baby, the quaff, okay, it was the 90s. He found me in the waiting room playing with the piano rug, the long one with all the keys, you ever seen those shits? No? Well, I was brushing my foot over  c  and humming something so loud that I didn’t hear him and he had to tap me twice with his ghost hands because he’s known me since I was small enough to have to put my whole body on c  to get it to play.   And when I took off my pretty dress from Puerto Rico and sucked my butt into a paper gown, he waved some blurry black photos of my insides and said, do you know what this means, my Angel? And I said, please don’t tell Daddy, because I already had three hot messages from him in my voicemail that I hadn’t listened to but they went something like, I’ll pay for it, blah, just like your mother, blah, hardheaded, blah. And he said we have to tell Daddy. And I said, nuh-uh. And he said, uh-huh. And we went like that back and forth and I guess the stress got to be so much that something in my stomach suckered in,  (hold breath) spun,  (exhale)  and whirled into a vacuum.  (Spit)   And that’s one down. You can find them at siete-uno-ocho cuatro-tres-cuatro y dos-nueve-nueve-dos. See, I don’t even need the paper. I’m smart. Your baby is smart. I memorize all their names because time freed me. And now I have space for lullaby.   Here are the - I - can I talk? Can I talk? Thank you.   Angel lies flat on the bed, spreading her arms and legs so that she’s in a snow angel position.   Here are the weapons they used to destroy me: Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Joseph. Julien. Jofe. Jack. I remember Joseph best! I remember that bitch. I remember Joseph with the green Jordans. I remember because I went, damn, you got it like that? Not mister uptighty bitey tidey-whitey whitey who won’t make eye contact when he puts his instruments in me got some Jays? I asked about them when he was putting his cold stethoscope on my teta, just because I got his number from this white lady in my building, the one with that badass kid — oh, you know her, Jacqueline! How is she? Oh, yeah, yeah, he didn’t say nothing. He shrugged then parted my knees with the gloves. I was trying to get to know him, you know, because I had never met him, and I like to know people before they look in my hoo-ha and put rubber on my panties because I am a classy lady, alright, I was raised alright. But he didn’t want to be known I guess. I guess in his program they tell him the patient is just a chart and a number and a birthday and a history of smoking and cancer in the family. He didn’t talk to me one bit, except to tell me that he noticed some bleeding when he parted me, and that he was very sorry, but he didn’t hear a heartbeat.   You can find him at siete-uno-ocho seis-tres-tres y uno-uno-cuatro-dos. Afterward, I went around to everyone I could find. I grabbed people’s jackets on the train. I yelled on the bus. I yelled so much the bus driver said can someone shut that miss up? But no, no one can stop me when I start hurricaning.   I said, do you need a doctor? Preferably better than him? This is where you can find them: Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Joseph. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-Pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. So many men and they all rot of babybreath. (Getting up)  I am thirsty. I want water. Your baby wants water!   Husband runs out of the room. We can hear water being poured off-stage. He comes back, helping Angel sip her water.   I’m sorry for yelling. I just get upset when I think about Joseph. The way he was looking at me, you know? Like I was procedure, not person. But if he knew me, if he really opened his ears and consumed me, I’d have her. I’d have a baby. We’d - I’m sorry. I know you like me to speak for myself. From now on we’ll say Jo-shush. Can you repeat after me, Jo-shush? You good? Good.   Listen, will you listen? (sung mostly to herself) Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-Pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Now this one’s gonna get you mad. Issac. I only know his name because I looked for him in the thing that’s online? Yes, you can -- yes, you can! You can look people up by their inmate number and that’s what I did. After. Not before. I know you don’t like it when I get all feelings first. When -- what was it you said? When I move with my anxiety, not my logic. And this was one of those times where I was holding my anxiety but I was desperate. You’d get desperate too, okay, if every path kept taking you to the grave instead of to heaven.   So what had happened was I traveled down the yellow brick road and down a gray alley where there was a woman sitting with her dog in her lap and she was looking at me and I was looking at her because she kinda looked like Tia Flores, a little if I squinted and tilted, just like her with a little more dirt under her nails. And I asked her if she knew which way Gravesend was and she said, why the hell do you wanna go over there, that’s where people get ganged and banged and I said, I’m a hero, I’m saving my new baby, and there’s a man there who will protect her and me from demons and doubters who are forged in the fire of exacting supremacy. Yeah, I see you shaking your head but that’s what I said, okay, I said that shit, because that’s what I thought and I say what I think, always, because I don’t believe in doublespeech like you men of gun, I believe in the truth, the truth is what brings you closer to God, the truth is what keeps the devil at bay, the truth is free. But anyway, I said that and she pointed down to the left, to the left so I followed the yellow brick road and found a gray apartment door on the corner of Avenue D. I knocked. He answered. He had one gold tooth and I thought, man, this really is a private, private, private practice. He said I should leave on my shoes and I immediately got a bad feeling because what type of home doesn’t have you take off your shoes? A bad one, that’s what. He gestured that I should sit in the makeshift living room turned lab turned armchair turned stir-ups and under the flickering lights he put his scalpel on my thigh and said, so you need to get rid of this one? And I said NO. The opposite. He asked me if I was sure. I said YES. He kept shaking his heads and I mean heads because at this point the chlorine -- he had just cleaned before I got there, right -- was getting up in my nose and into my brain. He said I was too pretty and too young to be ruining my life. I didn’t respond because I was getting bothered. The gold, the light, the gray. Instead, I snapped my knees together and stood. And he was like, you still have to pay! And I said MY CURRENCY IS MY FOOT and kicked him in the balls like Tio Rod told me to do when people started looking at me funny. And he screamed YOU BITCH and I ran and ran and ran and I started flying and dropped the latest baby on the way down the street, past the lady, past the trash, past the construction guys who said why you running ma, past the cops who gave me the good ole red and blue and said SLOW DOWN, but then they took pity on me because I was crying so hard that it turned into burps and I looked like the black one’s little sister. Snot and all.   (Beat)   See, I knew you wouldn’t like that story. But that’s what happened. Deadass, that’s what happened.    Can you call my mom? You don’t have your mother-in-law programmed into your fancy little gadget? It’s siete-uno-ocho tres-ocho-dos y cero-cinco-cero-cero. I know we’re not talking right now but I would really like to listen to her breathe. Can you --? Gimme me. Thank you.   Husband hands over his cell phone. As the phone rings, the receivers around her stop breathing — or stop moving so much, whatever’s easier. Angel makes a call. No answer.   (To the voicemail) Hi, Mommy. It’s your Angel. I have a secret: (quiet) Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Irwin. Iwanicki. Ingber. Ingberman. Igor. IIina-Yelena.   Wait, stop talking. I hear something.   Pause as they look around. Then comes swelling, sweet music. It sounds a little like an aria but of many rhythmic, popping voices. It’s clear to Angel that it’s her babies singing.   My parasites came to visit. They sound so good! You can’t hear them? Stop this bullshit: you hear them!   Angel gets up and spins herself. A lovely, if clumsy, pivot.   They’re getting hungry. They need something to eat. Do you have anything? Give me something! No, not that! Watch me:  (Angel does a fast step routine)  Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Irwin. Iwanicki. Ingber. Ingberman. Igor. IIina-Yelena. Henry. Hollander. Horne. Hope. Are you full yet?   (Abruptly stops dancing) Maybe she changed her number. She moves around a lot, you know, I was just trying the kitchen phone. Do this one: Siete-uno-ocho siete-cuatro-tres y cero-cuatro-seis-cuatro.   No? Nothing?   That’s okay. I have one last story for you. Although you were there for this one. So it’s not a story, I guess, for you, it’s a memory. You like Henry. I like Henry. He’s not a whoosh, or a Jay, or a gold tooth. He’s a cackle. Literally. He’s more laugh than person. What! It’s not an insult! He goes (she does his laugh) . It’s trustworthy. A man who cackles is not a man who lies. And he’s brown and he’s pink inside and he’s purple on the outside. That’s a person you can trust. You can trust a cackle. It’s not his fault his attendant -- okay, you’re getting upset. I thought the song would cheer you up. No, don’t cry. You don’t see me crying. This one was almost full-term. I should cry. I stink. I smell like babybreath.   I was getting a bagel that day when I felt it. This quick suck. Quicksand in my belly. I begged the guy at the bodega to call the Mr, tell him to meet me at Bellevue, okay, tell him I’m going to Bellevue. And I closed my eyes and willed myself down 1st Ave. When I transported to the receptionist desk, I said, I’m hurt. And the attendant was passing by on his lunch, yes, the old white one, and he said, no, he whispered because I wasn’t supposed to hear, he whispered, can it hold for my cholecystectomy? And the nurse nodded and then put her needle nails in my arm and said hurt how? But she wasn’t looking at me, you know, her eyes were around and about. And I said I’m hurt ing  now, right now, it’s hurt ing , because that’s the only way to get them to take you seriously. She said sit down, the doctor will be with you soon, and I said, I need Dr. Henry now! Give him to me, give me to him, whatever, but it needs to happen now, right fucking now or I’m gonna explode, there’s a bomb in my chest. And she said, ma’am, that’s a serious accusation, if that’s true we will need to call the police and I said, call the fucking police call the governor call the SWAT team call the FBI call motherfucking Batman you dumb bitch if you don’t get me Kolin Kerolle Kerstein Khafif Khan Khasidy Kamin Kamal Kassof Kaminski Kaiser Jo-shush Julien Jofe Jordan Jefferson James Jerome Jayasundera Jean-pascal Jean-Brice Jean-Noel Jean-Pierre Jean-whatever Issac Isben Inna Irwin Iwanicki Ingber Ingberman Igor IIina-Yelena Henry Hollander Horne Hope Hassan Hausknecht Halper Handler George Gary or Goldstein I will kill you. And then you arrived, wrenching yourself out of a cab. And when I saw you I knew. My insides broke in the lobby and I just knew. It wasn’t Henry’s fault. It’s not your fault.   That’s why I’m telling you right now that I’m not seeing another doctor. Not even if it’s a woman. Not even if it’s light itself. I’m not leaving my bed. You can call them right now. Go ahead. I don’t care if it’s Fred or Fong or Feurman or Flores or Fuchs or Friedman or Ferzli or Fazio or Feldman or Fairwa or Frenkel or Francois or Epstein or Erber or Empire. And when you call Siete-uno-ocho seis-tres-tres y ocho-uno-ocho-tres, tell them my wife and my kids said, I banish you!   No one believes me. No one ever believes me. No, you don’t. No, YOU DON’T! I don’t like to be told who I am and what I am and what compels me and what magic makes me! I’m not a liar! I had all those babies and they ate each other up in my womb and they ate me up, and now I’m not going outside anymore. I’m going to lay here for the next forty-eight hours, or days, or months, or years. No, I want to get up. No, I want to sit. Fuck you! I don’t know!   Angel stands but she bumps into too many things. She trips over one of the phones and ends up on the ground. She vomits into the waste bin. Not real vomit, of course. She’s puking out all of the names; it’s a strange, glittery occurrence. Her husband stands behind her and holds her head. When she’s done he smoothes her edges and holds her.   Sorry for yelling. I believe in the sun, you know? I salute the sun. I cast a hex on all those naughty men. I reach into the void and pull out a wand and I curse them for financial ruin, for emotional instability, for a toilet that never flushes, for a washer that always stains, for a drain that always clogs, for shoelaces inevitably untied, for sickness do we part, for hell and beyond.   Thank you for understanding. Sorry for yelling. And these are the names of all my babies: Daisy, Dagney, Daphne, Diana, Dorothy, Destiny, Desi, Dali, Dayo. Chantel, Charmaine, Candy, Catherine, Catalina, Carolina, Caprice, Camila, Cristina. Bella, Belcalse, Bethany, Bianca, Blanca, Brianna, Belinda, Brandy, Birdie. And I’m their only angel.   Angel sighs then stops talking. The Husband shakes her but she doesn’t stir. It seems she’s fallen asleep in his arms. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, retreats, and special events. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Jacinda Townsend is the author of the forthcoming Trigger Warning (Graywolf, 2025) and Mother Country (Graywolf, 2022), winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Her first novel, Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Jacinda teaches in the MFA program at Brown University. Follow Jacinda on her website . Trigger Warning (an excerpt) Homeowning had been Ruth’s idea, conceived almost the minute she became pregnant: it had taken her only one bout of morning sickness to start resenting the plant-infested bungalow they were renting, to start reminding him how impossible it was to heat the house’s back rooms. To start pronouncing its lone full bath as too small and old-fashioned for the magnitude of what was happening to her body. They were flushing money down the toilet twelve different ways, she argued, lining the landlady’s pockets ahead of their own. It had taken them a couple more years to piece together a down payment, but in that time, Myron took on Ruth’s American dream as his own, perking his ears at interest rate dips, covertly eyeing the real estate circulars he found in the supermarket. He was surprised, then, to feel a bachelor’s lack of regret at watching his house burn. A neighbor, Walt Meyers, pushed his wife to the sidewalk in her wheelchair to watch the fire just as something deep in the living room caterwauled before exploding. Walt stopped her abruptly yet no part of her body lurched forward: Myron found that his anima, too, stayed parked in neutral. His sensibilities, as the roof crashed to the foundation, fell to clinical analysis: he was intrigued at the idea of the power drill in his garage becoming hot enough to melt, and wondered at the thought that flames must, at that very moment, have been shooting out of the splintered screen of his plasma television. Yet even if he himself failed to be moved to regret about the loss of the house–the French doors they’d had installed between living and dining rooms, the crown mouldings that had sold Ruth on the house in the first place–there was Enix. How sorry he was for them now, and how worried for their mind. They’d watched the fire with a look of puzzled wonder on their face, their mouth slightly ajar, the glow of the sodium street light glinting off their braces. But when things went irrevocable, when the roof fell, and then the fire truck dragged into their front yard leaving two deep, muddy ruts behind it, Enix turned into a puddle of a child. Six firemen rushed out with two huge, gray nozzles and hooked the truck to the hydrant, and Myron took Enix’s hand. He felt them swoon a little next to him, as though the square of sidewalk they were standing on had sunk into the recently-rained earth. They didn’t cry, but Myron picked up the weight of them as he hadn’t been able to in many years. He let their head sink into the crook of his neck and felt their legs dangling past his knees, felt them spread into a slow smear of emotion that pooled against his own body and made him lightheaded. Their hair was so smoke-filled that he felt strangled. It was to be expected–Enix had been sleeping downstairs, and the fire had come up from the basement. But he found, too, that close to them, a sweet baby smell that could only have been his imagination, a corrupted memory of having held Baby Annie all those years before. Only through Annie did he feel the loss of the house, the death of the kitchen doorframe where they’d penciled notches to mark her jumps in height, the shattering of the patio door where she’d spent so many summer mornings sitting with her back against the glass, eating cereal out of a mug. Already, Enix was traversing two houses and two sets of rules, having to become emotionally ambidextrous, all because he’d chosen the wrong woman, the one most attracted to impermanence. After a string of girlfriends who’d hinted at destination weddings and sent birthday balloons to his dorm, it had blown Myron’s mind, when he first met Ruth, the way she’d excuse herself from his room right after sex, the way she’d leave him waiting for her in restaurants where they’d arranged to meet. Each time she showed up, fifteen minutes, sometimes half an hour late, flashing across his retina in her red curls and faux-fur coat, the relief shot through his brain like a narcotic. She appealed to the lowest part of his self-esteem, he supposed: she quite conspicuously didn’t need him, but she wanted him. Occasionally. Now she’d left him over a joke and she wasn’t coming back, and it turned out that Ruth’s kind of sexy was all wrong, once you were older, with a mailbox full of AARP solicitations and your body transforming into all the things you’d never wanted for it. He’d seen Ruth as a higher order of person, tethered as she was to nothing, but he’d been wrong. It was the solid brown earth, a man needed under his feet. He sat now in the Holiday Inn, eating the tin of honey-coated almonds that had been gifted to him by the sympathetic desk clerk, mindlessly patting his buzzing phone as if it were a baby, as if he could somehow calm its loud insistence. His old friend Anthony Rutherford had heard about his divorce through their grapevine of college classmates. And had come out of the woodwork to say he'd tried to warn him. She played you , Anthony texted him, out of the blue. You never could get that chick in line Nice to hear from you , Myron texted back, then shut down his phone. But when he turned it on again, fifteen minutes later, it buzzed with a parade of messages. My barber’s sending a guy out , began the final series. He hasn’t reopened since COVID, if you can believe. Get yours buzzed too? Come to my house, brother. Myron winced. After all these years. Anthony was still claiming honorary membership in the Black community. But he was one of Myron’s oldest friends. Freshman year of college, Anthony had sat coxswain as Myron rowed through his drinking problems, Anthony restraining Myron’s shoulders on several occasions as he heaved into the toilet on the men’s floor of their dormitory. And then there was the night at a bar on Limestone, when. After Myron won five pool games in a row, a crew of White frat boys had announced they “were gonna beat the shit out of that nigger.” Anthony had intervened, swinging his pool cue like a samurai sword as they advanced, then hoisting himself atop a pool table to sing Frank Sinatra, distracting the entire bar with his two booming verses of “New York, New York” for a long enough time that Myron was able to slip out the front door unnoticed. Even now, Myron could remember run-walking down the street outside the bar, counting out two hundred dollars of Phi Kappa Psi’s money, folding the twenties into his pockets as whistles and applause breached the sound barrier of the bar’s front window. All these twenty-five years later, Anthony had massaged his way into some sort of vice-presidency at UPS. As his star had risen, so had his hairline receded, but Myron supposed that was all the more reason for him to need a regular haircut. Myron cleared the messages, then used his right-hand fingers to drum the beat of “Green Onions” onto his knee. His phone’s wallpaper was a photo of Ruth and Enix when Enix was still Annie: from the left quarter, Ruth smiled sleepily at the world, holding Toddler Annie on her hip in front of the giraffe pen at the Louisville Zoo. Ruth’s sweetness, frozen in perpetuity: hers was the smile of a woman who’d made love to her husband that morning after asking why they didn’t try for a second helping of baby. Myron vividly remembered that morning of sex: it had been celebratory at the same time it had been like fucking someone he didn’t know. He was trying to make another human at the same time he was wondering if a prostitute, at least, might whimper into a couch pillow afterwards and tell him about her abusive stepmother. Not knowing Ruth had been maddening; not knowing what he didn’t even know made him sad. When Annie had first announced themselves as Enix, Ruth had grown impatient with his skipping, old mind, that could wrap itself around Annie’s new pronouns only when it was uncluttered. She herself had been bringing a book called Found in Transition  to bed with her, and the night she finished, she flung it at him before turning over to lie on her side. “How would you like it if someone kept calling you Myrick,” she said. “I mean, really.” He watched her shoulder slide into further relaxation, found the red curls flowing into the mattress, felt choked with emotion. “It’s not intentional,” he said. “My indifference curve on her gender is completely flat. I mean, if this gets Annie equal pay one day at work, I’m happy. I fully support Annie. Enix. Both of them.” “That’s just it,” Ruth had said, miserably. “There’s not a ‘both of them.’ Just an Enix.” He’d taken his mind to the gym then, sat in his office muttering “Enix they them” over and over to himself; he’d taken an empty lemonade bottle and turned it into a pronoun jar, putting a dollar bill in every time he misgendered Enix: the first week, Enix had taken the seventeen dollars and bought themselves a pair of rainbow leg warmers. He’d changed their name in his phone, and added pronouns. “ENIX THEY THEM,” he’d say aloud, each time it popped up. The money Enix collected in the pronoun jar dwindled to nothing, and what then became indelible in his memory was what Ruth had said to him after she threw the book. She’d rolled over in bed, her eyes still closed but the tone of her voice intent. “What if I told you I wasn’t who you think I am. Would you do that to me, Myron? Would you continue to get it wrong on purpose? What if I told you everything you knew about me was just a construct?” “Ruth,” he’d said, laughing. He hadn’t then been able to imagine anything as large as not knowing his own wife, not grasping her true mind. “Ruth come on. But you’d never do that.” She’d turned back over, he remembered, but then rose from bed, put on a hoodie, and gone downstairs, where he found her, thirty minutes later, sitting on the couch, finishing off an entire bag of potato chips. “Come on, Ruth,” he’d said gently. He descended to the bottom stair. “Come back to bed.” “Later,” she told him. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking hard.” Reticence hung constantly about Ruth, like bar smoke; hers was a love that could never bring them closer. Now, with Anthony’s chiding reverberating through his frontal lobe, Myron changed his phone’s wallpaper from Annie and Ruth to a different photo, one of Annie alone, pitching him a softball. The phone rang. It was a tone he’d coded in jest, the theme music to Jaws. This meant it was Anthony. “Hey,” he said, regret quieting his voice. “The guy’s coming in a couple of hours. Best my man could do on short notice.” “Oh, I’m close to you, anyway,” Myron found himself saying. “At the Holiday Inn on Hurstborne.” “Boy, what you doing at the–“ “My house burned down. I’m wearing clothes from the Salvation Army.” “Brother, what?” “Yeah. Down to the ground. Everything gone. Poof.” “You know you can stay here if you need.” “Lined up for an apartment already,” Myron lied. “I’m fine.” “Well, listen. You got a lot going on, but it’s not gonna help, walking around with some jungle afro. You gonna make it over?” “Yeah,” Myron said, aware that he was adopting Anthony’s phony New York accent. Neither man had ever lived outside the state of Kentucky but when Anthony turned it on, it spread like an infection. Myron wondered if he was in any shape to throw up all the resistance he’d need to sit in Anthony’s presence. When he arrived, he found Anthony sitting in his living room, an old boxing match roaring from his television. Anthony sat Myron down and shushed him, throwing his hands to the screen in supplication. Fury downed Wilder, the referee raised his arm in victory, and Anthony took his remote and switched off the screen. He sat upright on his sofa and sucked in his paunch, a move he’d crafted to smoothness in middle age. “So listen,” he said. “You’re homeless. I get it. But how’s your love life? You back on the market yet?” “Nope. There’s no one. You?” Anthony held out a hand and closed his eyes in the gesture that historically indicated he had a long story. He disappeared into his kitchen, came back with two tumblers of ice and a bottle of Woodford Reserve. He poured, dramatically. Said, “I was fucking this sister–“ “You were fucking your sister?” “A sister. A Black chick. I was fucking this sister but I could never figure out where she was and she’d never call me back, so I just started sitting around at night, smoking a lot of weed, drinking…” “You still messed up about her?” “Nah. When I finally caught up with her, she was living with her moms. And the mom was a real manhater, you know, that type. Real piece a work.” Habitually, Anthony presented Myron with the conversational impossibility of giving what he had just taken. Myron looked glumly down into his lap. “Sounds like you’re better off without her,” he said. “I dunno. It’s been six months and I feel like I’ll never find anybody again.” “You will. You’ll find someone as many times as you need to.” Anthony laughed, but it was the laugh of a dead man, a man who’d poured his life into the mold of a corporate ladder and watched it come away yet unformed. Myron watched his Bourbon sweat through his glass, its malaise seeping out into the ether. When the doorbell rang, it was a relief. The barber’s guy turned out to be a young woman whose mouth pursed disdainfully, in a way so beautiful it defied belief. Anthony paraded her into the living room, downed his drink, then poured a third. “Look at this work of art,” he said, still standing next to her. “What’s your name, sweetheart?” He leaned over her to look at the gold-plated script of her necklace, then answered his own question: “Marina.” “Yup,” she said, pursing her lips into an even angrier heart, one dense enough to pulse. “Marina all day.” “Marina,” said Anthony. “That means you got a boat somewhere?” “No. It means I’m Portuguese.” Myron could see the mump of her tongue, placed angrily into her own cheek. Her irritation was exquisite; it floated above the entire city. “Portuguese,” Anthony said. “I wouldn’t a guessed that. You ever been to Rhode Island? Lots of Portuguese up there. But they’re really all from this one little island. Government relocation.” “Never been to Rhode Island I just came to cut your hair,” she said. She glared at Myron. He felt falsely indicted. Marina was no longer floating anywhere: the exchange had settled back into a real world of sexual harassment and dirty old men. Marina cut both their heads and went away, taking with her a fifty-dollar tip on two fifteen-dollar haircuts. Myron thought of Twitter hashtags. #MeToo. He felt his heart contract. “Mah,” Anthony said, as he closed the door behind her. “You can’t find true love unless you’re stationed in the army.” Myron heard, in Anthony’s affectation, the deep misery of his trying to make a way in a world where both women and understanding were routinely denied him. Myron felt knocked over with grief: there’d be no Ruth to tell all this to when he got home, no Ruth to compare notes with, or bounce his own strange realizations against, forever and ever amen. “Hey you know,” Anthony said conspiratorially, in the exact way of Corleone, “you ain’t the only person from the class of ’01 getting a divorce.” “I’m sure I’m not. Statistically speaking, sixty percent of the country and I are getting a divorce.” “Be serious,” Anthony said, pouring more Bourbon, pitching the tumbler to the back of his throat. “You remember Paulina Wray? “Paulina. Hnnnh. Paulina. Paulina…” Paulina Wray walked across his mind suddenly, as if put there by a bolt of lightning. “Paulina! What happened?” “Who knows. Maybe Danny Todd turned out to be a shithead just like the rest of us.” Paulina Wray had been holding her Bible the last time Myron saw her. He’d known her as a freshman on the women’s floor of their dormitory–she’d come to UK all the way from Trigg County, and risen quickly through some mysterious, churchy ranks to lead the campus homeless outreach ministry. Paulina hadn’t been the prettiest girl in their class: she was short, almost neckless, and wore her purse slung across her body like a bandolier. But Paulina, with her religious fervor, was the most unachievable woman they knew, and thus the most consistently noticeable. Danny Todd, goofy, smelly Danny Todd, with his Tetris addiction and his hobby of intentionally gluing the men’s bathroom door shut, had set out like a conquistador. He joined Paulina’s outreach, wrapping 200 individual care packages for the homeless in one rainy Lexington weekend. Danny lodged his way into Paulina’s heart that month and stayed there: they were married sophomore year of college. She was into permanence, Paulina was. Kingdom living. Eternity. She was a woman Myron should have chosen all those years ago. At the very least, with both their marriages imploding and his house burned down, Myron guessed Paulina might have an intact flat screen television. “I’ve got her phone number,” Anthony whispered, looking around his own house as if it were a crowded bar. He removed his phone from his pocket and rotated it in the air. Once, twice. “Just for you, my man, I’ve got her number.” “What are you doing with her number?” “We actually do business,” Anthony said satisfaction edging his voice. “Stites and Harbison is one of our local firms. How about that.” “So why haven’t you  called her?” “Paulina would never go out with a white guy. She ain’t one a those. She doesn’t swirl.” “Well.” Myron reached into his jacket pocket and put his phone on the coffee table between them. He wondered idly whether Paulina and Danny had ever gotten around to having children. He and Ruth had started late with Enix, but Paulina’s children, if she had any, might be college-aged themselves by now. Out of his way. He imagined Paulina home alone, Danny Todd’s abandoned power drill hanging from a hook in her garage. “Sure,” he told Anthony. “Put her number in. I’ll call her. Maybe.” “Hey. No pressure. No skin off my nose, either way.” Anthony scrolled through his phone, then peered down and input digits into Myron’s. “I’m just trying to help a brother out. But remember–if you don’t call Paulina? Someone else will. You ain’t seen her lately, but that piece won’t stay on the market long.” Myron took his phone back and noted the time. “Hey. My man. I gotta get going.” He’d almost called him brother. At the door both men hugged, clapping each other on the backs in unison. A gesture, Myron thought, leftover from the time of apes. Back at the Holiday Inn, in his houseless, hotel-room future. Myron passed the front desk, noted a besuited man whose puckered, unbuttoned shirt collar spoke of a tie that was no longer there. The man was just standing there, at reception, in a pair of earbuds, and he tapped the toe of his shoe against the floor in some sort of rock/pop time, leather metronome. Myron veered away to put six feet between them but still he heard the man whisper. “Home stretch home stretch home stretch,” the man said, as if chanting it into the dusty hotel lobby might propel him all the way there. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Adrienne Dawes (she/her/hers) is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and teaching artist originally from Austin, TX. Her plays, including AM I WHITE, TEEN DAD, and THIS BITCH: ESTA SANGRE QUIERO, have been developed/ produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, Theatre Bedlam, New Harmony Project, The Fire This Time Festival, Theatre Lab at FAU, Queen City New Play Initiative, Stages Repertory Theatre, Teatro Milagro, National Black Theatre, and English Theatre Berlin, among others.  Adrienne received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and studied sketch & improv at the Second City Training Center in Chicago. Recent honors include: Walter E. Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Alice Judson Hayes Fellow at Ragdale Foundation, and artist residencies with Colt Coeur, PlySpace, & Crosstown Arts. Just before the strike, Adrienne staffed on her first TV show, working on a limited series for Hulu/ABC Signature (EP: Ellen Pompeo). She's easy to find online at www.adriennedawes.com and @heckleher on most social mediums. Future is F***** CAST (3) RONNIE: (20s/F or femme person, Black) programmer/hacker MARGARET: (20s/F or femme person, Non-White) VP of Human Resources, nervous energy/ also a training assistant named Xaria (pron. Zarr-ee-ah) CENAC: (early 20s/M, White) an intern bro, completely mediocre yet exudes an outrageously eerie excess of confidence ALSO: prerecorded COMPUTER VOICE performed by either Ronnie or Margaret. SETTING The future. A government tech bro office. Lights rise on a futuristic government co-working space. Ronnie sits at her desk, frowning at what looks like a personal device of some kind. RONNIE (quietly, into device) System entry. System entry. (louder) System ENTRY. With a few keystrokes, she tries another setting. RONNIE (soothing voice) Please: system entry. As Margaret enters with her lunch leftovers, Ronnie tries to hide the device under her desk. MARGARET Hey is this - - RONNIE Oh, I just, sorry - - MARGARET No, I’m sorry, lunch break. Just trying to find an open desk - - RONNIE No, it’s fine, I’m, I’m- - MARGARET Ronnie, right? RONNIE Ronnie. Yeah. And you’re - - MARGARET Margaret. HR. Thanks for letting me sit here! They replaced my entire staff last week and I uh don’t think the new guys like me very much. Margaret awkwardly chuckles. Ronnie continues working on her device. MARGARET What’re you working on? RONNIE New program. MARGARET New program? Doesn’t look like our interface - - RONNIE It’s not, it’s – this isn’t for work - - MARGARET (laughs, awkwardly) Oh no, I didn’t mean like stern voice , “Why aren’t you working Ronnie” - - RONNIE Yeah, cause it’s a personal device, private hotspot - - MARGARET Yeah, your own private personal lunch so you work on whatever you want! Or don’t work! Totally you, your - - RONNIE Margaret – we cool. MARGARET (relieved) Oh, thank God, thank you. I’m . . . kind of on edge all day. Every day. Barely sleep or eat. This is – I just bought an entire meal? Don’t know why I still – my lunch hour – I think I just go to be someplace else to be for an hour. Are you, would you want my lunch? Do you eat lunch? RONNIE I’m okay. Thanks. MARGARET Thanks, I mean, yeah OK . . . so . . . what does it do? Your program? RONNIE (frowns) Uh nothing yet. Still buggy, I can’t figure out why it’s not - - Cenac enters with an entitled swagger. He carries a bottle of Soylent. Ronnie and Margaret sit up, at attention. Ronnie hides the device under her desk. CENAC Oh here you both are. Together. RONNIE Cenac. CENAC Ronald. Just got back from a two-hour lunch with Geographic Operations - - RONNIE (dumbfounded) Two hour lunch - - ? CENAC I’m speaking . And apparently, there’s been some complaints about my “work behavior,” which is hilarious because - - MARGARET Allegations are actually quite serious - - CENAC Margaret , doesn’t concern you - - MARGARET Uh, I’m VP of Human Resources - - ? CENAC And I’m an intern who will probably run this division one day. Margaret’s eyes widen. Cenac leans in, way too close to Ronnie. CENAC So Ronald, what is it about me, exactly , that you find so inappropriate ? RONNIE (calmly) Well first, my name’s not Ronald. It’s Ronnie. It’s on my department profile, digital signature - - CENAC Allegedly - - RONNIE Not alleged, actual fact. My name is Ronnie - - CENAC Well, I guess that’s not a name I “recognize.” RONNIE Yeah, well, all I’m asking is that you remain courteous and civil - - CENAC That’s not an ideology I “represent.” RONNIE I know, Cenac . And I’ve been trying to figure out some way to . . . translate . And closest thing I can think is: the way you treat Chad, Blake, Garrett, Other Garrett - - CENAC They’re executive staff - - RONNIE So am I . I deserve the same consideration, same respect. Does that make sense ? CENAC (frowns) I dunno, I think if you continue to suppress my expression of freedom in the workplace, you’ll be fired. Does that make sense? MARGARET (quietly) You can’t fire her - - CENAC Can’t I, HR? MARGARET She’s head of your department. Technically, she’s your boss. CENAC “Technically,” I’m just a White guy with a Twitter X account. So you’ve both been warned. He exits. The women sigh in relief. Ronnie returns to her device. MARGARET (sighs loudly) God, I’m sorry, that’s not what the agency - - RONNIE Isn’t it? Look around, Margaret. We’re the only ones left. Margaret nods, solemnly. Beat. RONNIE But it’s alright. It’ll be alright. Eventually this will work. (at device) System entry. COMPUTER VOICE (VO) (soothing computer voice) Entry link. RONNIE (excitedly) Alright! Here we go! OK. (to device) Entry link: . . . Solange, A Seat at the Table. COMPUTER VOICE (V.O.) Solange uploaded. MARGARET I don’t understand: it’s an oldies app? RONNIE Not an app. More like a bot. You enter whatever self-care script you want and . . . let me just show you. (to device) Entry link: Rose water. Entry link: Coconut oil for skin and hair. Entry link: Pad See Ew with tofu. Entry link: Rihanna Devotional Prayer Candle. Might as well add, entry link: A$AP Rocky and Rihanna extended wedding playlist - - MARGARET (nods) I was going to say at least ‘Fashion Killer’- ahem ‘Killa?’ Beat. They both stare at the device, waiting. COMPUTER VOICE (VO) . . . Uploaded. RONNIE (relieved sigh) OK! So, let’s say you find yourself in a hostile environment - - MARGARET (nods) All day, every single, all day - - RONNIE (nods) There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry created around the defense of negative stimulus. From outerwear that inflates to create a protective barrier, to wearable technologies that distort the victim’s neural signals, so they have no experience of the attack - - MARGARET Dissoci8. My sister had one for work. She taught critical race theory. Until it got too dangerous. RONNIE (nods) Yes, current technologies can defend or deflect attack, but you have to continually purchase expensive upgrades to remain “functional” meanwhile nothing ever happens to the attacker. The next day they return to the courtroom or the classroom - - MARGARET Or government office - - RONNIE Government office. Yeah. Physical confrontation just continues or - - MARGARET Escalates. RONNIE Exactly. But I’m not building defensive technology, it’s offensive . I don’t want to stun or hurt somebody - - MARGARET We don’t - ?! RONNIE (smiles) I want to rewrite their entire genetic code, so their great grandchildren are born pacifist anarchists with heightened empathetic and collaborative skills - - MARGARET YESSSSSSS!!! Margaret raises a fist, excitedly then quickly recovers. MARGARET I mean yes. Very cool. Yes. And your program, it’d be ready exactly when?!? RONNIE Still testing the entry points. If it works, the victim should remain in a relatively “safe” functioning space, but the attacker would be disarmed completely - - Cenac reenters with what looks like a workplace device. CENAC Uh Ronald? I still don’t have access to the new dashboard. RONNIE Then you need to talk to the Help Desk, Cenac. That’s not my - - Cenac leans in again. CENAC What exactly is your job, then!?! COMPUTER VOICE (VO) Threat detected. Initiate? CENAC What did you say?! Margaret and Ronnie exchange looks. In unison: RONNIE MARGARET I don’t know . . . Uh . . . CENAC You don’t know? You’re department head, I thought you knew everything - - RONNIE I . . . I’m just asking you to follow procedure like everyone else - - ? CENAC When have I ever been everyone else - - He leans in again. Too close. Sound of device activating. MARGARET (softly, to Ronnie) Do it. Initiate. RONNIE Initiate - - ? CENAC What? Ronnie shoots up to her feet. She holds her device held out like a weapon. RONNIE INITIATE! Ronnie’s device suddenly lights up, sound of a soothing R&B music chime. Cenac and Margaret both freeze. Black out. RONNIE (breathing heavily) No! No, no, no! Lights flick back on. Ronnie is seated at her desk, wearing a virtual reality headset. She tries to stand up. Margaret, a training assistant dressed in futuristic business casual, rushes over to help her. MARGARET Ronnie. It’s over. Ssshhh. It’s OK. You’re done. That was amazing - - Margaret pulls off her headset. Ronnie charges forward, pulling out of her reach. RONNIE Where is he?! Where did he go? She falls over, losing control of her legs. Margaret rushes to her side. MARGARET Give yourself a minute. It all feels really real - - RONNIE Margaret? MARGARET Xaria, actually. I’m present in the training module just for narrative support, increased safety, sometimes technical assistance or or - - RONNIE (nods) Xaria, Xaria . . . we cool. MARGARET Cool, cool. Well. You did really well . . . Margaret reviews data on her device. MARGARET Addressed each micro aggressive behavior but maintained a position of authority, which is incredible considering . . . well, everything. But in real life, as you know, they will resort to physical intimidation and violence, so - - Ronnie rolls onto her back, breathing hard. RONNIE I wanted it to be real . . . just to see if my program worked . . . just to see his FACE. MARGARET (grins) Yeah only a programmer would enter VR and try to build an app to disarm generations of violent attackers – clever workaround the non-violence parameters. You’re definitely the woman for this job. Not that it’s a “job” - - Ronnie slowly sits up. RONNIE I want to finish. MARGARET Wait, careful - - RONNIE Put me back in. MARGERET Oh, you don’t have to go through all that again! You passed the basic module - - RONNIE I’m supposed to maintain employment at government agency so that I can hack into their private servers undetected, right? That’s what you’re asking me to do? Months and months of harassment, ridicule; every moment of every day I have to be ready to defend my work, my worth, my physical self? MARGERET Yes. RONNIE Then I have to see this module through to the end. I have to know I can survive. MARGARET Ronnie, are you sure you really want to - - ?! RONNIE I want to be done, done with all of this! Then I’ll remake myself. Build a version that can’t be broken. Ronnie returns to her desk, puts on the VR headset. RONNIE Load it! Margaret loads the next simulation. MARGARET Alright I’ll uh – guess I’ll see you on the other side, Ronnie. RONNIE I’ll see you, Margaret. Xaria. Simulation activates, Ronnie’s body goes limp. Blackout. END OF PLAY. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Shams Alkamil is a Black Muslim poet. Alkamil began writing as a mode of self-expression to then being twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut book West 24th Street highlights the anchor a location has on lived experiences. Alkamil speaks of her struggles with queerness, self-love, and the Black immigrant experience. Her second book When Time is Circular was published in June 2024. When not writing, Alkamil spends her time as a local educator in Austin, Texas. Alkamil's work has appeared internationally in Mizna , Ebony Tomatoes Collective ,  The Ana , Ruth Weiss Foundation , Tofu Ink Arts Press , WriterCon , Poet’s Choice , and more. Love you. Wish I could have your cancer.  after Gabrielle Calvocoressi Got your diagnosis Monday afternoon. Heard it during 8th  block. Did not cry on the line. Would love to open your  eyes. Force tears to fall. Will you stop pretending? Strong  isn’t your best color. Washes you out. Love you. Wish I  could have your cancer. Do not care if I’m already  immunocompromised. Fuck thyroid. Don’t even know who  Hashimoto is. Don’t care. Would be honored to keep you  alive. Wish I could feed you during chemo. Maybe ginseng  candy. Or zero-alcohol beer. No ice chips. Too cliché.  Whatever makes you smile. Wish I knew what makes you  smile. Wish you could tell me. Love you. Can’t bring myself  to touch your chemo port. Wish I was smarter. Invent a  new seatbelt. Would finally stop grazing your port. Less  wailing. More time to focus on the road. Wish I knew how.  Miss fighting with you. Shout  Stop texting and driving .  Wish you could say  I am your mother . One more time. Who  knew it was the last time? Miss you. Wish it was Stage 1.  Would hate you less. Why did you ignore it for so long?.  Know you were preoccupied. Wish he argued less. Could  help you notice sooner. I’ll visit the doctor tomorrow.  Declare I am you. You are no one. Open my chest bare. Say  Cut them off ! Stare at Death in the corner. Lose staring  contest. Bargain him ginseng candy. Or forgiveness. Say  Leave her alone . Love you. Wish you could say it back. Not  later. Wearing no oxygen mask. No painful gasps between  words. Wish you could tell me. How less of a woman you  feel. Wish I knew how to respond back. Would keep quiet  instead. Love you. Wish I could have your cancer. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Lydia Mathis has an MFA in fiction from New York University. She earned her BA in English literature with a minor in classical civilizations from Agnes Scott College. She has worked as a teacher for Teach for America in Memphis and as a teaching fellow at Coler-Goldwater Hospital in New York City. She is the recipient of A Public Space’s 2023 Editorial Fellowship and is currently an assistant editor at A Public Space. She has stories published in or forthcoming from  Stanchion ,  Southeast Review ,  Five on the Fifth ,  oranges journal , and  North American Review . A Body Walks into Public Safety Her feet were pounding. The slightest pressure sent thumbtacks of pain spiking through her heels. Admin had increased the rounds each public safety officer had to complete because, though the proud private college hated to admit it, the cash flow was stale as all hell. A small all-girls school in the south wasn’t a magnet for donations. The school didn’t even have the redeeming quality of a sports team. This meant cuts to “non-essentials,” which meant fewer officers, which meant Sandra had swollen feet. A body in pain seemed to be Sandra’s reality now.  Instead of four officers for the night shift, it was now only her and Jeffrey. They had to cover longer distances and go on more walkabouts. The office was already on the edge of campus, attached to the school’s parking garage, which made the trek feel even longer. Jeffrey was out patrolling the north side of the campus, and then he’d make his way clockwise around the grounds. He’d left nearly thirty minutes ago, so he’d be gone another hour at least before Sandra had to be back on her feet.  Sandra already had to deal with two lockouts and a lost—probably stolen—bookbag. The girl with the lost bag had given Sandra a headache on top of her aching feet. As if she didn’t hear enough whining from her bed-bound mother, she had to deal with the tears of a child who didn’t know better than not to leave her shit unsupervised in the library. When Sandra asked the girl why she didn’t just take her book bag with her to the bathroom, the girl ended up sobbing, and Sandra had to spend twenty minutes patting the girl’s back and giving her two cups of water to calm her down. Eventually, Sandra convinced the girl that she would keep an eye out for the missing bag and that the girl’s professor would understand why she couldn’t turn her midterm in by the deadline.  Sandra only had a few more hours before she was off work, and then she could go home. She would check on her mother, who by then would be asleep with re-runs of Family Matters  or Good Times playing on the television. If Sandra skipped taking a shower, she would have about five hours to sleep before she had to wake up early in the morning to take her mother to her radiation appointment. Actually, she’d have about four and a half after checking the apartment to make sure her mom hadn’t convinced Mr. Jameson, who somehow at seventy-nine still had the energy to chase tail, to bring her a pack of cigarettes. Her mom often flashed a tit or two to get Jameson to go down to the cornerstone and get her “boros.”  Whenever Sandra would raise hell about the cigarettes and her own mother basically prostituting herself, her mom would just say, “let me have my fun while I die, girl.” So, Sandra had given up arguing and settled for crying to herself as she threw away cigarettes her mom tried to hide, and she wondered what she would do when it was just her watching eighties TV shows. She thought she was okay with being alone, never settling down, working to be able to take care of herself and her mom, who was always either recovering or going through a new treatment. But what would she do when she really was alone? Sandra lifted her leg, taking off her sock and shoe aggressively, kneading the pad of her foot. She would get her mom through this cancer treatment too even if she had to put a chastity belt (bra?) on her and chain Mr. Jameson up in his apartment.  Her preoccupation with her own foot might be why the first thing she noticed about the body that walked into the office was its feet. The small room was almost bare. Only having a two-legged desk with a rolling chair for the officers and three folding chairs that were propped against the wall opposite the door. The wide-open space gave Sandra a clear view of the bare toes that walked in.  “Where ya shoes at?” was the first thing Sandra said.  She was still focused on her foot, not bothering to look up. The feet she could see from her periphery were fair and covered in the reddish Georgia dirt. It was raining earlier, and the mud clung to those pallid little toes.  “Don’t track that mud in here,” Sandra said without emotion.  She pulled her big toe from the smaller ones it had started to crowd against, trying to alleviate the cramping the bunion created in the middle of her foot. She would have to budget for the bunion corrector her doctor recommended she buy from Amazon.  The toes by the door didn’t care for what Sandra said and walked further into the room, disappearing from view as they neared the desk.  Sandra closed her eyes at their approach. The cleaning of the public safety office had become the duty of the officers after admin limited cleaning services to dorms, class buildings, and the cafeteria. If Sandra didn’t whip out the broom and mop every weekend, the white office would turn into a canvas of browns, reds, and greens, and Sandra hated messes.  “Listen here. I said don’t track that m—” Sandra started to say as she looked up.  Sandra’s foot fell from her hand, slapping against the floor. The cold tile barely registered as her eyes walked up the knees that were cross-hatched with thin, almost delicate open wounds. The fluorescent lights caused an awful gleaming of the blood that slid slowly down dirtied legs. Sandra didn’t know how much of that blood was coming from the knees or underneath the skirt, where she noticed a trail that slithered down the inside of the thigh. Her eyes stopped there. “Whoa,” Sandra said, breaking the silence engulfing the room. She sat, eyes unblinking, looking at those thighs. The line of blood made it look as if the thigh had been sliced in half. For thirteen seconds, she did nothing but look at that halved thigh. Then a hand was gently placed on top of hers, pulling her eyes back to attention. Sandra looked down at the hand. Only the fingertips touched her. The contact was so light it tickled. Sandra almost giggled at the feeling; she was weak to tickling.  “Your nails are filthy,” was the only thing she could think to say.  The hand started to retract, and Sandra realized she was being a fool, a word she loved to call the silly girls around campus. She clutched the hand in hers. The dirt-caked fingers were white and long, and they looked nothing like her mother’s knobby black ones, but for a moment, it was as if she was holding her mother’s hand in her own. Her mom’s hand would tremble when she reached out for Sandra before gripping tight to lift herself out of the tub when Sandra finished bathing her. Just like her mother, the hand trembled before gripping tightly onto hers. One of Sandra’s only indulgences was her monthly trip to the nail salon. She could only get short nails, but she liked to get a sharp stiletto shape. Sandra released the hand she was holding to take the fingers.  “One second,” she said. She walked to her desk, pumped some hand sanitizer on her hands and pulled a piece of paper from the printer, and walked back. She sat down and took the fingers of the right hand, using her nails to scrape the dirt onto the paper she’d placed on her lap. Sandra’s nails, painted a deep hunter green, seemed to complement the clumps of brown dirt crowding against the cuticles and hiding underneath the nails of the hand she held. She felt briefly like the whole of nature was being shared between their fingers. The room was quiet around them. Sandra could hear the sound the dirt made as it fell onto the paper.  Plap, Plap, Plap.  “There you go,” Sandra whispered.  She folded the paper until she was sure none of the dirt would fall out and put it in her pocket, thinking it’d be useful at some point. She looked up and finally noticed the angry red rings around that pale, pale neck. Her stomach rolled and she knew she couldn’t look up any further. She knew she should. She should look the person in the eye and let them know she was there for them, that everything would be okay, that they would call the police, the real ones, give them the paper full of evidence, and go to the hospital. But Sandra felt like she did when she was nine and afraid of the dark and refused to look inside any room that didn’t have the lights on. She’d prefer not to know what she didn’t know, so she kept her eyes focused below the chin.  Before she knew what she was doing, she was bringing her hand to the throat. The flinch back was violent, like the snapping motion of whiplash during a car accident. Sandra was caught off-guard and flew back, nearly falling off the plastic chair.  “Sorry, sorry,” she said softly, trying to calm the trembling body before her. Sandra moved slowly this time, changing the target of her hands. It was like she was in a stop-motion film, the way her hand advanced, hovered in the air for a beat, then advanced again. It was a film of attempted comfort. Her hand, centimeters away, stopped, and for a second, she was lost as to what she should do. Should she rub or pat or a combination of both? How did she usually touch her mother? Her mom said she always loved how Sandra handled her like she was a grown woman but still special, still someone who needed to be cared for. Her mom was no longer the woman who could lift the couch up by herself to vacuum or spring up to pop a cursing daughter in the mouth. Now she was the woman who had to lean on her daughter to walk up the stairs and who had to grip her daughter’s hands to be pulled out of bed. When Sandra’s hands were pressing into her mother’s waist to keep her upright or holding tight to her hands to lift her up, how did she manage not to break her mom while not making her mom feel breakable? How did she do that?  Right now, her hand seemed to have the potential to destroy this body in front of her, like one brush of her fingers would take the skin off that shoulder, and the flesh would slough off and fall wetly to the floor. Sandra looked at her fingers and knew they would sink into the skin, pass epidermis and dermis, moving like a phantom through muscle and nerve and bone until she got to the heart and ripped through so that it beat and beat and beat, filling the room, bursting her eardrum and the vessels in her eyes, collapsing everything on top of her.  Her hand was a weapon, a detonation, a transgression, and she tried to pull it back quickly, but the body in front of her stopped her, catching Sandra’s hand. Sandra clasped the hand, held on, gripped hard, and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.