Moonlight and Blood
It's nighttime. An hour until I have to go to bed. My work for the day is over. Weapons training practice is done. I've had dinner. And now I'm not hanging out in the tents with the others. I'm lying on the ground under a tree. It's cold. Autumn has just begun to set in, summer flickering out. The hustle and bustle of the camp is silenced but still people flow from one place to another, oblivious to me as I lay under the tree thinking. That's good. I'm not in the mood for conversation. I hope people will leave me alone.
I think about my mother. I want to make her proud. I want to make her feel joy at the young woman I have become. But I don't know if I can. I know, I know she loves me no matter what. She's the kind of woman with an open, kind heart that loves unapologetically and unconditionally. But I need to make her happy. I need to make her proud. She put her life on the line for me. She escaped her master's house despite how dangerous that was. She trekked through miles of hostile territory with a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and me. I was only a year old when my mother took me and my siblings and she fled. She didn't want us to live the kind of life she had lived. She wanted better for us. She wanted hope.
The war had just broken out. Slaves all over the Empire were revolting. People couldn't take it anymore. They told themselves that anything was better than to continue living in slavery, than to raise the new generations in slavery. And they were right. I'd rather die than live as a slave.
Because as hard as it is to live here, like this, I am considered a person. I am considered as a person, not a thing or an asset to be used. Not a piece of machinery meant to do work. I value that, above everything. The right to be thought of as a person.
But that doesn't mean I'm happy. The war has stretched on for twelve years and there is no end in sight. We're losing people - people who would rather die standing up to the Empire than be under its heel, but people nonetheless. It has gone on for most of my life. And as much as I know I should hold onto hope, I can't.
After everything my mother has done for me, I think, after everything she has done for my freedom, I am not doing enough to help the war effort. Sure I work hard to make sure the soldiers and other people are fed. Sure I work hard to prepare the medicine Issenne shows me how to prepare. I train for the day I will myself join the ranks of the freedom army. Yes I've even seen battle during the few times when there was a real crunch to get numbers up. I've bled and screamed and hurt for the war. I've exhausted myself working. I've been hungry and thirsty and cold. And I wanted to do all of it. Because bleeding and hungering and working and hurting for a better future is so much better than bleeding and hungering and working and hurting to increase the wealth of already rich people. And that's what slavery is. I'd rather die than be a slave. And I'm lucky that I can fight for my freedom. Our freedom.
But still it adds up to nothing, So much constant work and yet it all feels like nothing against the sheer force of the Empire rolling out over all of us. The Empire is stronger than steel and sharper than razors and the Empire is overwhelming. It's everywhere. And I am but a fly against it. I can't take on the force of the Empire. It's so huge, so all-consuming, so omnipotent and omnipresent.
I want to help. I just really, desperately want to help. But there's so much to do everywhere. There's so fucking goddamn much. And I'm weak and small and so so entirely insufficient. I don't know, I don't know. And I'm just ... I'm such a failure. People are dying on the battlefield. And I'm here lying on the ground. I can't do it. I can't stand up to the Empire. I can't save my people.
Issenne is walking up to me. I can tell that they're walking up to me and not just walking up. In the dark night their black birch-brown eyes look like pools of shadow. They move like a raven, as they always do. They are kind. They are good. I love them. But they're not the kind of person it's always easy to get along with. They're stubborn. They're brave. They came of age when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne and you could tell. There's always an anxiety about them. A fear behind the dark pools of their eyes. There's always a sense of protectiveness that's so strong it's almost unbearable. The younger people call them overbearing. Though by all means they're young themself. It's hard to remember that they're twenty-one though. Not when they never act like it. It makes sense though. They've lived through so much war. So much slavery and oppression and exploitation before that. So much loss. It made them who they are.
And who they are shines with pure divinity like the sun. Too bright, too hot, yet warming and nurturing at the same time.
It's hard to remember that I'm thirteen, too. This last year was the year where I really exited the safety of childhood - well, the meagre safety of childhood that can be found amidst war. It's been both exhilarating and terrifying to look at my new responsibilities and try to navigate them. But what if ... what if I can't?
"Charlotte?"
"Yeah?"
"What is it?"
"What?"
"You're not okay. Why?"
"I don't know. I'm tired."
"Physically or mentally?"
"In my ... in my soul."
"What are you thinking?"
"That I don't think ... I don't think I can do it."
"Who made you think that?" They puts their thumb on my wrist, feeling my pulse beat through them.
"No-one. Well, Anthem did. But to be fair she was only talking about her own fears and then I kind of internalized them."
"Oh. Yeah she's very unsure of herself. She's sweet. Full of dreams. But she's young. She doesn't recognize her power."
She is all that, and more. She's a little shadow of a teenaged girl. She moves through the world as if she's a part of the air itself. You can't notice her unless you try. We always have to make sure to try. She left her master's house eight years ago, all alone, six years old, and full of more rage and pain and overwhelming agony than she could possibly comprehend. She gave everything she could to the cause. Fought in battle after battle and bathed herself in the blood of the Empire, and in her own blood as well, as soon as she was old enough that people couldn't hold her back anymore. She is really a lightening bolt of action, with the eyes of a wolf and the snarl of a cougar. But underneath all that she's a broken girl who was raised by cruel masters rather than loving parents. She can't comprehend how she could possibly be good and beautiful and deserving of love. She can't comprehend how she could have something to give the world.
But at the end of the day she does have a point. Her and I are both young. Too young to properly know our place in the cause. And we're both lost children. And we're both just two children standing up against the might of an Empire that controls the entire world.
"Look at us though," I say. "We don't have power, do we? Not money nor power nor time nor anything. How can we change things?"
"We have spirit. We have each other. We have cleverness. Kindness.
Ingenuity. Cooperation. We have a will that they cannot break. And we have a fighting spirit that they cannot subdue. One that always finds a way. Even against the most insurmountable of odds it's always finds a way." Their voice is soft in the moonlight. Contemplative. Understanding.
"How?" I ask. "Just look around. Everything's a fucking mess. I can't even picture what the new world would look like."
"Let me tell you a story. A real one this time. I've got to warn you though it's fucked up."
"Okay?"
"This was back when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne. I was twelve at the time. You know how I was living in a plantation near the Imperial palace, right? And how the war had just started, and most of the people were still in chains, and there was barely a spark of hope for victory but we kindled that spark anyways, right?" They speak slowly, imbuing each word with meaning. The moon shines softly on their face.
"Yeah." I look at them with wide eyes.
"Right so I was still part of the war effort despite not being part of the war. I helped make medicine to be snuggled to the troops, right? Well, one day I received a strange request.
"I won't tell you what her name was. I don't even know. She was beautiful though. She was unfortunately a slave at the Emperor's palace. It was horrible. One of her jobs, among others, was to buy food for the Emperor's intricate feasts. She could never sneak anything in or out of the castle though, since they checked her very thoroughly once she got back."
Oh. Oh. Oh shit.
"And then what?" My voice betrays my tiredness. But it is also full of curiosity. I want to hear more.
"She came to me in secret. We hid up in the roof of the barn. She told me that she needed the powder from the archenji plant. And a lot of it. You know what that is, right?"
"I might. I'm not good at remembering every herb ever like you are. Isn't it like a poison?"
"It is. And a very powerful poison too. A very small amount of it would be able to kill a person. But it takes a week to act. You could chug litres of concentrated archenji tea and still not feel anything. Until approximately a week after you ingested it. Then you would die. Painfully. There is no known cure. The Empire didn't know about the plant existing. There are a lot of plants they don't know about. Which is poetic and part of the reason I'm drawn to medicine.
"Anyways, she told me her plan. She would come to the village in the morning the day before a great feast day. She would drink as much archenji tea as she could. And then she would go back. And they would detect nothing remiss about her. They would think she smuggled nothing. Then she would begin cooking for the feast, along with the other servants. Except, she would pour her blood into the wine. Not enough that it's detectable but enough that it's there. And she'd mix it into the sauces. And she'd drip it into the gravy. And she'd bake it into the bread. She'd die in a few days. But then so would the Emperor. And all his highest officials. And their families. The elite of the entire Empire would be dead. If things went according to plan."
I'm astonished at her bravery. How. Why? She was willing to risk so much, willing to risk it all, for her people. That was selfless. She signed her own death warrant and she didn't care.
"Issenne?"
"Yes?"
"Did you agree to the plan? I ... I know a lot of people who would disagree with you for letting a young woman die. They believe death is only for the battlefield or for old age."
"Many people believe that the only honourable way of sacrificing your life is on the battlefield. They do not realize that when we are at war, the battlefield is constantly all around us. They do not realize that in these days, life is war. And any time you die for your people, any time you die so that they might see a modicum of victory, you die on the battlefield.
"I haven't told anyone this part of the story. Many would react badly. But I'm telling you because there is a very important lesson in all of this."
"What's the lesson?"
"I promise I'll get to it. Anyways I wasn't on board with her plan at first. It was too risky, I thought. I told her, that nobody had tried anything like this before. We didn't know if it would work or not. We didn't even know when and for how long the poison was stored in the blood. We only knew that there was a chance she could succeed. And no idea how slim or wide that chance was. We only knew that it was definite that she would die. I told her not to.
"But she looked at me. And her eyes were darker than the deepest night. And deeper than the darkest pool of water. And she said, that she might as well be dead anyways. Because to not be free, to be exploited and abused and held under by the Emperor and his cronies, it was worse than death.
She said that the knowledge that she stood up, the knowledge that she rebelled, that in and of itself was worth life. It was worth more than a life lived under chains. Even if she didn't succeed in her assassination attempt she would die trying. And I saw the determination behind her eyes. I saw the rage and desperation behind her voice. And I felt the unwavering love, the incomprehensible bravery, the overwhelming destiny that was within that request. And I told her that I'd get her what I needed.
"I did get the message out to the warriors and the supporters on the warfronts that an assassin would kill the Emperor and his cronies sometime after the festival. I told the messenger that I did not know whether they would succeed but a spy should be sent to see if there was confusion and chaos in the palace.
"I spent the next few months going out into the grassfields and the marshes, deep where nobody could see me. And I gathered dry leaves from all the archenji plants I found. And I crumbled them into powder. I stored it in secret in a hole in the ground under my hut. And I waited until the day of reckoning. I woke up in the middle of the night, long before the day began. I dug out the bag of powder. There was enough to make two meals out of it. I made tea with it, making the tea more and more and more concentrated until it was thicker than whole milk. Have you ever had whole milk?"
"Once."
"I've only had it once as well. But you remember how thick it is, right? How milk from powder doesn't do it justice. Well the tea was thicker than that. And it was blood red. I filled my entire water skin with it. I was almost tempted to taste a bit of it. Just to see how it tasted. But I didn't. Obviously.
"I waited for her to come, at the agreed-upon spot near the tree at the edge of the fields. She came an hour before dawn. And we hugged. She had tears and power in her eyes. I gave her breakfast. And it was a good breakfast. Rice, potatoes, carrots, cabbage leaves, and even an onion and a radish, all boiled together. I gave her a lot. She would be dead soon. I didn't know why I was feeding her so well. But I was. Maybe it was a waste. I don't know. We sat there eating together in the light of pre-dawn. The air was so strange. Like we were in a different world. The dawn was just threading the tips of its electric blue fingers through the black of the night sky when she sat down with my water skin in her hands. She sat leaning back on me and I hugged her, stroking her hair and quietly singing to her. Songs of sadness. Songs of loss. Songs of freedom. Songs of love. Songs of hope. In a few minutes it was over. She stood up, and she walked to the market. And as the sky finally turned its shade of daytime blue, she was long gone. Forever.
"I prayed every spare chance I got that her plan worked.
"And you know the rest."
I do know the rest. It's common knowledge. Some anonymous assassin had taken out the Emperor, the entire government and most major generals. In the chaos and confusion that reigned amongst the Imperial troops, we struck. Our troops overwhelmed them. For months we overwhelmed them. Despite them having superior technology and training. And we gained so much ground. Millions of slaves were able to flee to the warfront. Including Issie. I remember meeting her that night when I was four years old and she was a frightened-eyed girl that looked so big to me.
The war is going better now, than it was all the way in the beginning. It's still not going well. Not at all. A new emperor is on the throne. New generals in the meeting rooms. But it's going better. We took the chance we got and made the most out of it. We have a chance of victory.
That story is horrific. It's horrific but it's still powerful. It's disturbing but ... but there's something about it. That gives me strength and I don't know how. I'm not quite sure how it's supposed to make me feel better though.
"Oh my god," I say.
"Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you though?"
"Not really."
"Okay that's understandable. I was being rather cryptic. You have to remember though, she was a slave in the heart of the Imperial palace during a time when the war was just started. She had nothing. No power. Less power than anyone. She was in the heart of the Empire. She couldn't even dream of escaping. Because if she escaped they would kill her loved ones. She didn't have a huge network of people supporting her work like we do. She didn't have the time that we have to pour into the war effort. She didn't have any power. And yet she still had so much power anyways. She was one slave against the combined forces of the entire Empire's government, their guards, everything. And all she had was spirit, faith, hope, and pure rage. She used what she had anyways. She used what she had and some could say she singlehandedly turned the tide of the war. She didn't, she did get so much help from many people. But still, she had less help than you and I do. She didn't even know if her plan would work. She just had hope and rage and the will to make things better.
"And she did it. She succeeded. Despite the fact that all the odds were against her she succeeded. And guess what? That just means that the odds don't mean anything. Sure it looks like we're not powerful. Sure it seems like we can't do anything of substance. When you compare us to the might of the Empire. But looks are often deceiving. What counts is your spirit. What counts is your rage. Your love. Your will to fight. What counts is the choices you make, and the fact that you want change more than anything. And I've seen you Charlotte. You do. You yearn for it. I long for the day when you can find what true and complete freedom is. But until then know. That you are enough. You are a warrior from your very soul. And you can bring them down. We can bring them down."
"Issenne?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. And ... did you ever tell anyone else? About what happened with that girl?"
"No I didn't. I don't think I ever will. They wouldn't understand."
"Can you tell Anthem? She needs it. Probably more than me."
"Yes Anthem needs to know. We both know how stubborn she is though."
"Where is she anyways?"
"I'm fucked if I know. You know how she has a habit of disappearing. She might not even be in the camp she might have gone off into the fields."
"She'd make a good spy."
“Honestly, she would. It's past bedtime now. Come sleep."
"Give me a few more minutes I need to think."
"Do you feel better?"
"Yeah."
Basilisk
Okay
I don't quite know what's going on, not really.
I'm being dragged through a dizzying carousel of people and walls and things, so many things, that I can barely even focus on.
Strong hands are wrapped around my wrist, pulling me forward harshly. Warm hands that feel cold.
I'm don't quite know what's going on and I'm thankful for it.
I'm scared but I feel too dizzy, too weak-willed to act upon the fear.
I feel hesitant but the hand pulling me hushes the errant thoughts inside me. Silences the voice wanting me to run away.
Until I meet a pair of eyes I can't look away from. Aching with hunger. Big and young and anguished. I stop in my tracks. Almost fall over. So young. So hungry.
I turn to the child. Look at him. He looks at me. My mind is coming back into focus now. Suddenly a broad figure steps between me and the child.
The child. I can't see him anymore. I look at the figure in front of me. Oh. It's him. The one who was holding my wrist. He arrests me in his gaze. I'm dizzy again.
He hands me a handful of pills, like a child offering candy to their friend. I tip them into my mouth, dry-swallowing them. It hurts and I almost choke but I need to quell the budding desire in my heart to just start screaming. I need to stop feeling so ... so flighty. I need to make my mind able to walk where my wrist is being pulled to. The pills crawl into my aching, empty stomach. And suddenly the world is blurrier and dizzier than it's ever been and I can barely keep standing.
"Walk," he says, his sweet candy voice having cold icy undertones. I walk. I walk and I keep walking and I walk and I walk and I walk.
A door. A pretty familiar one. Mahogany. Ivory-trimmed. Rich. I'm scared of it. I don't know why. The brass lock clicks open and I'm pulled into the densely-carpeted mass. White walls. Paintings. Paintings. Paintings. Gold. Terror. Inside me. But my mind and body are too weak to do anything about it. Which is perfect. If I can swallow this terror I won't have to face THAT terror.
I need to .... I don't know.
The world keeps spinning and I cling to the hope that tomorrow I'll forget that tonight even happened. I freeze, guiltily, and push that thought away.
I force myself up the stairs.
———
Black nothingness melts into gold and white. Carved figures. The agony of bright sunlight. Headache. An overwhelming, sick feeling permeating through my soul. Nothing. I feel like nothing. But I always did.
I tumble out of bed and make my way to the bathroom. I throw up. It physically feels like my stomach is being pulled apart. It was empty to begin with and it's emptier now, somehow. I don't care. Hunger just means that my collar bones will get more prominent, my arms more delicate, my waist more thin.
I make my way back into the spacious bedroom, onto the plush silk sheets. I shiver a bit, and consider just leaving out the door. That thought makes me shiver more. My slow feet drag me back to the four-poster prison and I drape myself over it. No, not prison. This is a place of hope, a place of opportunity.
"Hey. Someone's up." His voice is always sweet but with a sharp, menacing edge. If you brushed against it it was so unbearably soft. But if you leaned into it, it would cut you.
"Yeah. Someone is up. What's it to ya?" I'm tired, my voice the tiniest bit cracked.
"Get in the car. We're going to breakfast. And then we're flying to Dubai. It would be such a lavish place to spend the weekend."
No no no I don't want this I'm too tired I want to curl up with my sister in in a dark room that's a bit too warm and just a touch smokey. I want soft words and slow caresses and being able to sleep soundly.
Wait. What am I thinking? It will be fun. It will be good. He has so much to show me. So many places to fu... oh God. My legs move of their own accord, towards the door, towards the morning outside and towards the sweepings of the streets.
The children, the beggars, the people desperately selling trinkets, the people waiting at the bus stop on their way to factories like cattle coalescing outside the slaughterhouse. It wasn't fair, wasn't fair, wasn't fair the way the world was. It wasn't fair that some people were born into wealth and health and others were born into death. But the world was human and free. I could disappear into that.
"Oh are you leaving?" He said it so innocently yet I didn't miss the subtle fingers of a threat in his words. I'm snapped back into reality. No I'm not leaving. Of course I'm not leaving.
Just to to be sure my mind doesn't fucking betray me again I gulp down a pill that helps with anxiety. I feel numb now. Like I'm in water, like I'm looking at the world from inside an aquarium. I feel slightly nauseous. I eat more pills than food. It's worth it though.
"I'll get ready. Get my hair just how I want it, find nice clothes, all that." Be gorgeous for him.
"You do that. You always look so pretty for me." That statement makes me want to die. But no. Of course I'm pretty for him. The least I can be is his.
So I force a smile.
The Men Who Sit to Pee
The Men Who Sit to Pee
November 13, 2024
Robert’s parent’s home is in Schenectady, New York (42.81420N, 73.93960W). Robert lives (now) in the basement, next to the hot water heater, across from the furnace. His parents rent out his old room to two day laborers (Robert calls them losers) who pay their rent weekly. His friends used to come over for sleep-overs and homework. Now, they arrive via Zoom. They each say they are saving the planet by not driving. In reality, they are saving their own lives by not walking.
Two miles is too far for the average 30 year old mouth breather.
Besides, his parent’s social security check does not purchase the food it used to. Robert’s social security disability check could, but he has his eyes on a new game console by Christmas.
On tonight’s agenda, what to do about those who do not think as Robert (or his group) do. Whatever caused this, must be stopped. Whoever is responsible, must be crushed. The cost of everything keeps increasing and that needs to end.
In the end, the world must know what Robert knows. There must be a reckoning to set things straight. People need to know what needs to be done. Robert will begin with his group, then the county, then the state. There is too much at stake not to understand. There is too little time not to begin.
With his narrative set, Robert waited for each of his group (should be called a cabal) to make his presence known on Zoom.
It was now or never.
Within 20 seconds, Robert opted for never.
The big to-do within his group was the announcement of a new generation AMD chip that consumed twice the previous power, but leading to four times the speed. It did not require overclocking. It did not require a subscription service. This chip would usher in the next generation of games and gamers.
The group tore through their 64 ounce sodas and Hot Pockets with relish. They ignored Robert. They forgot he existed. They told stories of past conquests with previous systems, despite their flaws. Robert heard not one word about the economy or those responsible. For the first time, Robert viewed his friends as both ignorant and apathetic. He sat slack jawed during the encounter.
Robert attempted to remain calm. He counted to three before he acted. He inhaled prior to dispatching a guttural scream designed to silence all detractors.
But, no one ever heard it. Robert heard another speak of a price drop for those who knew the code. This alone silenced the group. This silenced Robert. So much so, Robert fell from his leadership position among his peers.
He became devastated, then elated. Despite the horrors of government, the people in positions of power, and the deeds they do, Robert had a new plan, involving a new processor, possibly a new gaming system, for the holidays.
With all of that, he would never have to leave the basement ever again.
Robert’s parents sat at the kitchen table deciding which of them would go back to work to pay for the lights and the heat. The experts predict a harsh winter this year. Their borders opted not to extend their lease another year. Their cash ran thin and would have to be stretched again.
They should have downsized, 12 years ago, to that condo in Central Florida.
It was always warm there.
And these condos aren’t built with basements.
Jinxed jesting jejune junior jobber...
Kooky King Kong kapellmeister
just jabbering gibberish (A - K)
Again, another awkward ambitious
arduous attempt at alphabetically
arranging atrociously ambiguously
absolutely asinine avoidable alliteration.
Because...? Basically bonafide belching,
bobbing, bumbling, bohemian beastie boy,
bereft bummer, bleeds blasé blues, begetting
bloviated boilerplate bildungsroman,
boasting bougainvillea background.
Civil, clever clover chomping, cheap
chipper cool cutthroat clueless clodhopper,
chafed centenary, codifies communication
cryptically, challenging capable, certifiably
cheerful college coed.
Divine dapper daredevil, deft, destitute,
doddering, dorky dude, dummkopf Dagwood
descendent, dagnabbit, demands daring
dedicated doodling, dubious, dynamite,
deaf dwarf, diehard doppelganger, Doctor
Demento double, declaring depraved
daffy dis(pense)able dufus Donald Duck
derailed democracy devastatingly defunct.
Eccentric, edified English exile,
effervescent, elementary, echinoderm
eating egghead, Earthling, excretes,
etches, ejaculates, effortless exceptional
emphatic effluvium enraging eminent,
eschatologically entranced, elongated
elasmobranchii, emerald eyed Ebenezer,
effectively experiments, emulates epochal
eczema epidemic, elevating, escalating,
exaggerating enmity, enduring exhausting
emphysema.
Freed fentanyl fueled, fickle figurative
flippant fiddler, fiendishly filmy, fishy,
fluke, flamboyantly frivolous, fictitious,
felonious, fallacious, fabulously fatalistic,
flabbergasted, fettered, flustered, facile,
faceless, feckless, financially forked,
foregone, forlorn futile fulsome, freckled
feverish, foo fighting, faulty, freezing,
fleeting famously failing forecaster, flubs
"FAKE" fundamental fibber fiat, fabricating
fiery fissile fractured fios faculties.
Gamesomeness goads gawky, gingerly,
goofily graceful, grandiloquent gent, gallant,
genteel, geico, guppy gecko, gabbling gaffes,
gagging, gamboling, gestating, gesticulating,
garlic, gnashing, gobbling, gyrating,
gruesomely grinning, grappling, gnomadic
giggly, grubby, gastrointestinally grumpy
gewgaw gazing gesticulating guy,
geographically generically germane,
gungho, grave gremlin, grumbling, guiding,
guaranteeing, guerilla gripped gatling guns
ginning gumpshun.
Hello! Herewith halfway harmless hazmat,
haphazard haggard, hectored, hastily,
hurriedly, harriedly hammered, handsomely
hackneyed, heathen, hellbent hillbilly, hirsute,
hidden hippie, huffy humanoid, hexed, heady,
Hellenistic, holistic, hermetic, hedonistic
heterosexual Homo sapiens historical heirloom,
homeless, hopeful, holy, hee haw heretical hobo.
Indefatigable, iconographic, iconic, idealistic,
idyllic, inimitable, idiosyncratic, ineffable,
irreverently issuing idiotic, indifferent, inert,
ineffectual, ingeniously iniquitous, immaterial,
insignificant, indubitable, inexplicable, ignoble
itches, ineffectually illustriously illuminating
immovable infused ichthyosaurus implanted
inside igneous intrusions immensely
imperturbable improbable.
Jovial jabbering jinxed January jokester
just jimmying jabberwocky
justifying jangling jarring juvenile jibberish
jubilantly jousting jittering
jazzy jawbreaking jumble
justifying, jostling, Jesus;
junior jowly janissary joyful Jekyll
joined jumbo Jewess jolly Jane;
jammed jello junket jiggled
jeopardized jingled jugs.
Kooky knucklehead klutz
knowingly kneaded, kicked, killed
knobby kneed kleptomanic.
The Cartography of Small Distances
Mari had been painting her mother's face for twenty-seven years, but she still couldn't get the eyes right. Her latest attempt sat on an easel in her studio—oils still wet, brushstrokes visible like scars—the forty-third in a series she'd never shown anyone. In each painting, Lei Chen appeared as she had in 1996: thirty-six years old, wearing the blue dress she'd bought at Bloomingdale's for Mari's kindergarten graduation, standing in front of the window of their Queens apartment with Manhattan's skyline bleeding into the background.
The gallery show opened in six hours. Mari's other work—abstracts, cityscapes, the pieces people actually paid for—hung ready in the white-walled space downtown. But here she was, still trying to capture something she'd lost before she was old enough to understand what losing meant.
Her phone buzzed. Jonathan, her gallery manager: "Final walkthrough in 30. Where are you?"
Mari texted back that she was on her way, though she hadn't showered yet and the October rain was turning the city's morning commute into a special kind of chaos. She studied the painting one last time. The proportions were perfect, the color palette exactly as she remembered, but her mother's eyes remained stubbornly wrong—too knowing or not knowing enough, seeing too much or too little, holding secrets Mari couldn't quite decode.
The doorbell rang, its echo filling her Bushwick loft. Nobody buzzed anymore—everything was coordinated through texts and apps. She checked the security camera feed on her phone and felt her throat tighten.
Her father stood in the rain, umbrella-less, water darkening his gray hair. She hadn't seen him in three years, not since their argument at the Phoenix retrospective where he'd accused her of exploiting their family's tragedy for art. Now here he was, on the morning of her biggest show yet, looking older than she remembered and somehow smaller.
Mari pressed the intercom. "Ba?"
"Let me up, daughter. We need to talk."
His voice still carried traces of the Beijing accent he'd never quite lost, despite forty years in New York. Mari buzzed him in before she could think better of it. While his footsteps climbed the stairs, she threw a sheet over the portrait of her mother and quickly wiped paint from her hands.
David Chen had once been an artist too—a promising sculptor whose work had caught the attention of New York's contemporary art scene in the early '90s. But he hadn't touched clay since Lei's death, choosing instead to teach high school math in New Jersey, measuring his days in equations that always balanced, problems that always had solutions.
He stood in her doorway now, rain dripping from his coat onto the paint-stained concrete floor. His eyes went immediately to the covered easel.
"Still painting her?" he asked.
"Why are you here, Ba?"
He reached into his messenger bag—the same one he'd carried when Mari was young, now fraying at the edges—and pulled out a manila envelope, heavy with what looked like photographs.
"Your aunt in Beijing sent these. Found them while cleaning out your grandmother's apartment." He held out the envelope. "Pictures of your mother. From before."
Before. The word hung between them like smoke. Before New York. Before Mari. Before the slow unraveling that had ended with Lei Chen stepping off the Queensboro Bridge one spring morning while her husband was teaching trigonometry and their daughter was learning cursive in second grade.
Mari took the envelope but didn't open it. "The show opens at seven."
"I know. I saw the Times preview." He paused, looking around the studio. "They called you 'an emerging voice in contemporary Asian-American art.' Your mother would have been proud."
"Would she?" Mari's voice was sharper than she intended. "We'll never know, will we?"
Her father flinched but didn't retreat. "You were too young to remember her before. Who she was in China, what she gave up to come here. I thought... I thought you should have these, before tonight. Before you show the world your version of her."
"I'm not showing any paintings of Mom."
"No?" He gestured at the covered easel. "Then what's under there?"
Mari's phone buzzed again—Jonathan, growing impatient. "I have to go. The walkthrough—"
"I'll drive you," her father said. "It's raining too hard for the subway."
She wanted to refuse, to preserve the careful distance she'd maintained since the Phoenix show. But the rain was getting worse, and something in the weight of that envelope made her nod.
In her father's ancient Volvo, stuck in traffic on the BQE, Mari finally opened the envelope. The photographs spilled out like secrets: Lei Chen at eighteen, playing violin in a Beijing conservatory; at twenty, teaching music to children; at twenty-five, newly married, standing in front of the apartment building where she'd grown up. In every image, she was smiling—not the careful smile Mari remembered from their New York years, but something wider, unguarded.
"She was concert level," her father said, eyes on the gridlocked traffic. "Could have played professionally. But the conservatory wanted her to stick to traditional Chinese music, and she loved Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart. So she taught instead, played Western classics for children whose parents wanted them to be modern."
Mari studied a photo of her mother with a group of students, all holding violins. "Why didn't she play in New York?"
"She tried. But here, no one wanted a Chinese violinist playing European music. They wanted her to be exotic, traditional. The only jobs she could get were teaching basic piano to beginners." He changed lanes abruptly, earning angry honks. "Do you remember the violin she kept in the closet?"
"The one you sold after she died?"
"The one she sold six months before. Said we needed the money for your art classes." He glanced at her. "She saw it in you, you know. The same hunger she'd had, the need to make something beautiful in your own way, not the way others expected."
Mari looked at another photograph: Lei at their wedding in New York City Hall, wearing a simple white dress, holding a bouquet of daisies. Her smile was smaller here, more contained, but her eyes still held that brightness Mari had never quite captured in her paintings.
"Why didn't you tell me any of this before?"
"Would you have listened?" He turned onto Canal Street, where the rain was creating rivers between lanes. "After she died, you stopped asking about her. Started painting instead. I thought... I thought maybe that was better. To create something new instead of trying to hold onto what was gone."
They were nearing the gallery now. Through the rain-streaked windows, Mari could see the banners announcing her show: "Mari Chen: Distances," featuring one of her cityscapes—a view of New York at twilight, buildings dissolving into abstract patterns of light and shadow.
"I have to ask," her father said as he pulled up to the curb. "The piece they featured in the Times preview. The one they called 'Mother's City'—it's not really about the skyline, is it?"
Mari gathered the photographs, careful not to let them get wet. "You should come tonight, Ba. See for yourself."
He nodded, though they both knew he probably wouldn't. The gallery world had stopped being his world the day Lei died. But as Mari stepped out into the rain, he called after her.
"She kept journals, you know. In Chinese. I have them in my attic, if you want them."
Mari turned back. "I can't read Chinese."
"I could teach you. Like she was going to, before."
The rain fell between them, turning the city into watercolors. Mari thought of all the paintings in her studio, all the attempts to capture a face she was too young to fully remember, eyes she could never quite get right.
"Maybe," she said. "After the show."
Inside the gallery, Jonathan was pacing, phone to his ear, orchestrating the controlled chaos of a major opening. He looked up when Mari entered, dripping onto the polished concrete floor.
"Thank god. The Times photographer will be here in twenty minutes, and the lighting on 'Mother's City' isn't quite—" He stopped, noticing her expression. "Are you okay?"
Mari looked at the painting in question, hanging on the gallery's main wall. She'd painted it six months ago, after a dream about her mother. At first glance, it appeared to be a straightforward cityscape—Manhattan at night, lights reflecting off water. But looking closer, the buildings resolved into musical notes, the windows into measures of a violin concerto she'd found in her mother's things years ago but had never heard played.
"Can we move it?" she asked. "To the south wall, where the natural light hits in the evening?"
Jonathan blinked. "But we planned the whole flow around it being here."
"Trust me."
While the gallery assistants carefully relocated the painting, Mari walked through the space, seeing her work with new eyes. The abstract pieces she'd thought were about urban geometry now seemed to echo the patterns of her mother's blue dress. The cityscapes held fragments of Beijing streets she'd never seen but somehow knew. Even her earliest works—the ones she'd painted in high school, angry and grieving—contained shapes that might have been violin strings, might have been bridge cables, might have been the lines connecting one generation's dreams to another's.
The Times photographer arrived, followed by the first preview guests—critics, collectors, other artists. Mari answered questions on autopilot, watching the light change as evening approached. At six-thirty, with thirty minutes until the official opening, she grabbed her keys.
"I forgot something in my studio," she told Jonathan. "Stall for me?"
She took a taxi back to Bushwick, rain still falling. The portrait of her mother waited under its sheet, eyes still wrong, still searching. Mari uncovered it and, working quickly, began to paint over those eyes—not trying to fix them this time, but letting them be what they were: windows into a story she was only beginning to understand.
At seven-fifteen, she walked back into the gallery carrying the wet canvas. The space was packed, glasses of wine circulating, conversations flowing. She found the spot she wanted—a small alcove near "Mother's City"—and hung the portrait herself, ignoring Jonathan's startled protests.
Her father stood in front of the painting when she finished, though she hadn't seen him arrive. They watched together as viewers noticed it, conversations stuttering then resuming in lower tones. In the portrait, Lei Chen still wore her blue Bloomingdale's dress, still stood before the Queens apartment window. But now her eyes held music—notes flowing out into the Manhattan skyline, carrying stories from Beijing to New York, from mother to daughter, from one kind of art to another.
"The journals," Mari said quietly. "Could we start next week?"
David Chen nodded, not taking his eyes from his wife's painted face. "I'll bring them Tuesday."
Around them, the gallery hummed with voices, with rain against windows, with all the small distances between what we remember and what we create, what we lose and what we find, what we keep and what we transform. Mari thought she could hear music too—faint but clear, like her mother's violin playing somewhere just out of sight, building bridges across time, across languages, across the spaces between one heart and another.
Later that night, after the crowds had gone and the critics had filed their reviews, Mari sat alone in the gallery with the envelope of photographs. She spread them out on the floor beneath her mother's portrait, mapping the geography of a life she was only now beginning to know. Tomorrow, there would be sales to track, interviews to give, success or failure to navigate. But tonight, she simply sat with these fragments of her mother's story, learning to see with new eyes, learning to paint with colors she hadn't known existed, learning that some distances can only be measured in the space between one generation's dreams and another's understanding.
Outside, the rain finally stopped. Manhattan's lights sparkled through the gallery windows, musical notes written in electricity and glass, playing a concerto of memory and possibility that echoed through the halls of time, carrying the sound of a violin that had been sold but never silenced, telling stories that had been lost but never truly forgotten, painting portraits that were never quite finished but always, always reaching toward truth.
Hours later, as a new day began, Mari packed up the photographs and took one last look at her mother's portrait. The eyes still weren't quite right—they never would be. But now they held something she recognized: the same hunger that had driven Lei Chen to cross oceans for the music she loved, the same need that kept Mari painting canvas after canvas, searching for a truth that could only be found in the space between what was and what might have been.
She turned off the gallery lights and stepped out into the pre-dawn quiet of lower Manhattan. Somewhere in New Jersey, her father was probably grading math tests, finding comfort in problems that had solutions. Somewhere in Beijing, her aunt was maybe looking through more old photographs, uncovering more pieces of a story that had no end. And somewhere between memory and imagination, between loss and creation, between one generation and the next, art was still being made, bridges were still being built, distances were still being measured in brushstrokes and violin strings and the endless effort to understand what it means to carry another person's dreams into the future.
Mari began walking home through the sleeping city, already thinking about her next painting. This time, she thought, she would start with the eyes—not trying to get them right, but trying to get them true. Sometimes that was more important than accuracy. Sometimes the only way to see clearly was to look through the lens of love and loss and the long journey between what we inherit and what we create.
The sun rose over Brooklyn as she reached her studio, painting the city in colors her mother might have loved, might have played on her violin, might have seen in her daughter's art. Mari set up a fresh canvas and began to work, adding her own notes to a composition that had started long before her, would continue long after, a song of small distances and great loves, played on strings that stretched across time, painted in colors that only the heart could see.
The following Tuesday, David Chen arrived at Mari's studio carrying a cardboard box of journals. They sat at her paint-splattered table, autumn light slanting through the industrial windows, and he began teaching her to read her mother's language. Each character was a small painting, he explained, showing her how to break down complex forms into simpler strokes.
"Your mother tried to teach you when you were small," he said, watching Mari copy the character for 'remember.' "But you were stubborn. Said you only wanted to speak English."
"What did she say to that?"
"She said you had an artist's heart—too busy seeing the world your own way to follow someone else's rules." He smiled faintly. "She wasn't wrong."
The first journal entry they translated together was dated April 1989, shortly after Lei had arrived in New York:
"The city plays its own kind of music. Not like Beijing—no bicycle bells, no street vendors calling their wares. Here, the symphony is in the subway rumble, the taxi horns, the dozens of languages mixing on every corner. I watch people hurrying past my window and imagine what instrument each one would be. The businessman in his sharp suit: a trumpet, bright and insistent. The old woman with her shopping cart: a cello, deep and continuous. The children skipping to school: a flute section, light and unpredictable.
"David says I should practice my English by speaking to shopkeepers, to neighbors. But I'm afraid my words will come out wrong, will reveal me as an imposter in this concrete forest. Better to listen for now, to learn the city's rhythms before adding my own voice to its song."
Mari thought of her own first attempts at art—tentative sketches hidden in school notebooks, afraid they would reveal too much, say the wrong things. "Did she ever find her voice here?"
"She was starting to," her father said. "That last year, she was composing again. Modern pieces that mixed Chinese and Western styles. She never let me hear them, said they weren't ready." He paused. "The manuscripts are probably still in storage somewhere."
They spent the afternoon moving between characters and memories, between one woman's written words and another's painted interpretations. Mari learned that her mother had loved thunderstorms, jazz music, and the way pigeons gathered in Washington Square Park. She discovered that Lei had spent three months writing a concerto inspired by the sounds of their Queens neighborhood, only to tear it up because it "caught the notes but missed the soul."
As the light faded, David packed up the journals, leaving one behind. "Start with this one," he said. "From 1996. The year she was teaching you to paint."
After he left, Mari sat alone with her mother's words, sounding out characters slowly, checking her father's hastily written notes. One entry made her pause:
"Watched Mari painting today. She sees colors I never noticed—the purple shadows under park benches, the gold hidden in brick walls. She doesn't know the rules yet, doesn't care that trees 'should' be green or that faces 'should' look a certain way. I envy her freedom. When did I lose mine? When did music become about pleasing others instead of expressing truth?
"Perhaps that's why I can't finish my compositions anymore. I've forgotten how to see the world as it really is, learned instead to see it as others expect it to be. But Mari—she paints the heart of things, not their surface. Today she painted me, and though the proportions were all wrong, somehow she captured something I thought I'd hidden. Am I as transparent to her as the watercolors she loves? Or does she see through me because she hasn't yet learned to look away from truth?"
Mari got up and uncovered her latest painting of Lei. In the gallery lighting, her mother's eyes had seemed almost alive, holding music and memory in their imperfect depths. Here in the studio, they looked different again—questioning, maybe, or questioning her. She thought about what it meant to see truly, to create honestly, to translate one form of art into another.
Over the next weeks, as reviews of her show rolled in and sales exceeded expectations, Mari continued learning her mother's language. Each character became a small window into Lei's world, each journal entry a piece of a puzzle she hadn't known she was solving. She learned that her mother had played violin at subway stations sometimes, late at night when she couldn't sleep. That she'd been composing a piece for Mari's eighth birthday—a piece that would never be finished.
The journals from the last year were harder to read, filled with darker thoughts, with doubts and fears and a growing sense of displacement. But even there, Lei's love of music shone through. Her final entry, written the day before she died, was about a street musician playing Bach on the subway platform:
"He had the notes all wrong, the tempo too fast, none of the proper dynamics. But he played with such joy, such freedom! For a moment, listening to him massacre Bach with such happiness, I remembered why I fell in love with music in the first place. Not for perfection, but for expression. Not for others' approval, but for the pure pleasure of creating something true.
"Mari asked me yesterday why I don't play violin anymore. I told her I was too busy. The truth is, I'm afraid. Afraid I've lost the ability to play with joy, to create without fear. But watching her paint, seeing how she throws her whole heart onto the canvas without worrying about rules or expectations, I wonder: Is it too late to learn freedom from my own child?"
It was too late, of course. The next morning, Lei Chen had walked to the Queensboro Bridge in the early spring dawn. But something of her lived on—in her journals, in her daughter's paintings, in the space between what was lost and what was found.
Mari began a new series of paintings, different from anything she'd done before. These weren't portraits of her mother, weren't cityscapes or abstracts. They were translations—visual interpretations of Lei's journal entries, paintings that tried to capture the sound of bicycle bells in Beijing, the rhythm of New York subway cars, the color of hope and fear and love and loss.
She worked through winter into spring, as her father continued teaching her Chinese characters and her mother's journals continued revealing their secrets. The new paintings grew into something unexpected—not a memorial to what was lost, but a conversation across time, a duet between one woman's words and another's images, a bridge built of art and memory and understanding.
When the series was complete, Mari hung them in her studio—thirteen paintings, one for each year of her life with Lei. She invited her father to see them first, watching as he moved from piece to piece, reading the journal entries she'd incorporated into each composition, seeing his wife's words transformed into color and light.
"The eyes," he said finally, stopping at the last painting. "You've finally got them right."
Mari looked at the painting—not a portrait this time, but an abstract piece based on Lei's final journal entry. In the center, barely visible unless you knew to look for them, were a pair of eyes. Not perfectly rendered, not photographically accurate, but true in a way she'd never managed before. They held both sadness and joy, both fear and freedom, both loss and possibility.
"Not right," Mari said. "True."
David nodded, understanding. Then, surprising them both, he asked, "Do you still have that spare room? The one you were going to turn into a darkroom?"
"Yes. Why?"
"I've been thinking... maybe it's time to start sculpting again."
Mari looked at her father—really looked at him, the way she'd learned to look at her mother's words, the way Lei had looked at the world and translated it into music. She saw the artist he'd been, the teacher he'd become, the father who had carried his own grief in silence for twenty-seven years.
"We could share the studio," she said. "You could teach me Chinese in the mornings, work on your sculptures in the afternoons."
"And what would your mother say to that?"
Mari smiled, thinking of Lei's words about freedom and truth, about learning to see with new eyes. "I think she'd say it's never too late to create something honest."
That night, after her father left, Mari sat in her studio surrounded by paintings that were no longer just hers. They belonged to Lei too, and to David, and to the long chain of artists in their family who had tried to capture truth in different forms—music, sculpture, paint, words.
She opened her mother's journal one last time, not to read but to run her fingers over the characters that had become another kind of art to her. Tomorrow, she would start a new painting. Tomorrow, her father would bring clay into her studio. Tomorrow, they would begin translating grief into creation, silence into expression, distance into connection.
But tonight, she simply sat with the quiet, listening for the music her mother had heard in the city's voices, looking for the colors hidden in shadows, feeling the weight and the lightness of all the small distances that make up a life, a loss, a love, a truth finally seen clear.
Fin
The Adventures of Little F
Preface
The idea for this story came to me on an ordinary day when random thoughts began to form into something entirely unexpected. Just think about it: how often do we say or hear the word "fuck" without really considering its meaning or the emotional charge it carries? And then, suddenly, I thought — what if it’s not just a word, but a quirky little character? What if it’s more than just an expression of emotions?
This is how the image of the little guy Fuck was born: comical and a bit ridiculous, but always upbeat, no matter the challenges. He’s the kind of character who strides through life with confidence, despite his “stick arms” and “stick legs,” his tiny head, and his often odd decisions. He’s funny, clumsy, but that’s precisely where his charm lies.
Through his story, I wanted to show that even the most ordinary things can hold something delightful and amusing. We can look at a crude word from a new perspective, as a cute, charming character that reminds us not to take life too seriously.
***
One day, the little guy Fuck woke up with a very important thought — he had decided to become serious. But he had two problems: first, his head was so tiny that all serious thoughts just floated right out of it, and second, his stick arms and stick legs didn’t help much if he lost his balance.
“Today, I’m going to the office!” declared Fuck, puffing up his tiny head with pride. He marched confidently down the street, but each time someone came near, he’d stumble a bit, either with one leg or the other. On his way, he met his friend Pip, who had flippers instead of arms, and tried to greet him seriously:
“Good day, Pip! I’m off to the office; very important… uh… things await me!”
Pip looked at him for a long moment and then said, “Oh, come on, Fuck! Who’s going to hire you at an office with those stick arms? You couldn’t even hold a cup of coffee!”
But Fuck was determined. He eventually made it to the office, though he spent half the way rolling and tumbling. Once inside, he was, to put it mildly, met with surprise. The receptionist asked:
“What do you want?”
Fuck paused, thinking: “Yeah, what do I want?”
And then his tiny head lit up with a brilliant idea:
“I want… I want everyone to have as great a day as I’m having!”
And you know what? Everyone in the office laughed and realized that was the best plan for the day. From that day on, little Fuck became the company mascot: wherever he went, he instantly lifted everyone’s spirits.
© 2024 Victoria Lunar. All rights reserved.
The Weight of Small Things
An hour before Anna learned about the birds, she was measuring rice. One cup, two cups, three—each scoop precise and careful, grains clicking against the glass measuring cup like tiny bones. Her mother had taught her this exactness, this attention to the small things. "Cooking is chemistry," Eleanor would say, leveling flour with the back of a knife. "Baking is architecture. Everything must be perfect."
Now Eleanor was in the hospital again, and Anna was cooking dinner for four: herself, her father Thomas, her teenage daughter Mei, and Dr. Marcus, her mother's oncologist, who had been joining them for Tuesday dinners ever since he'd delivered the first set of bad news six months ago. These meals had developed their own peculiar choreography—the careful navigation of topics, the strategic deployment of silence, the way they all pretended not to notice when Thomas's hands shook too hard to lift his wine glass.
The rice measure slipped, scattering grains across the counter. Anna watched them bounce and roll, finding the gaps between tiles, hiding in corners where they would later surprise her bare feet. Such tiny things to make such noise. She thought of her mother's voice: "Even small mistakes compound, Anna. Better to start over than to proceed imperfectly."
The doorbell rang as she was still counting fallen grains. Dr. Marcus was early—he was always early, as if he could somehow get ahead of time itself. She heard Mei let him in, their voices mixing in the foyer: his measured doctor's tone, her daughter's careful politeness.
"Mom's in the kitchen," Mei said, and then footsteps approached—not the doctor's familiar tread but her father's heavier gait.
"Anna." Thomas stood in the doorway, still wearing his coat. His face had the blank look it got when he was processing something difficult. "Dr. Marcus called. He's not coming to dinner."
She looked at the rice scattered across her counter. "He's always here on Tuesdays."
"There's been a—" Thomas paused, choosing his words with unusual care. "Your mother had some tests this morning. They found something unexpected."
Anna's hand found the edge of the counter, grains of rice pressing into her palm. "What kind of unexpected?"
"Birds," he said. "In her lungs. Tiny ones. Living ones. They can see them moving on the scans."
The rice scattered when Anna's knees gave out, her father catching her before she hit the floor. They ended up sitting together against the kitchen cabinets, surrounded by fallen grains, while Thomas explained what the doctors had told him: how the latest CT scan had revealed small, dark shapes in Eleanor's lungs, how at first they'd thought it was progression of the cancer, how the shapes had moved while they watched, beating their wings against her mother's ribs.
"They don't know what kind of birds," he said. "They don't know how it's possible. But they're there. Breathing her air, living in her body."
Anna thought of her mother in her hospital bed, imagined tiny wings brushing against the walls of her lungs, delicate feet gripping the branches of her bronchi. It should have been horrifying. Instead, she felt a strange sort of recognition, as if some essential truth about Eleanor had finally been revealed.
"Does she know?" Anna asked.
Thomas shook his head. "They've sedated her for now. They're afraid... they're afraid if she panics, the birds might panic too."
Anna closed her eyes, remembering all the times her mother had held her breath to keep from screaming—at Anna's father when he drank too much, at Anna when she dropped out of medical school, at herself when the cancer first appeared. Always holding everything in, containing herself, keeping her birds caged.
"I need to see her," Anna said.
"Dr. Marcus said—"
"I need to see her."
The hospital corridors were the same as they'd been that morning when Anna had brought her mother fresh pajamas and crossword puzzles, but now every sound seemed significant—the hum of fluorescent lights like distant wingbeats, the whisper of ventilation systems like tiny birds calling to each other through the walls.
Eleanor's room was dark except for the glow of monitors. They'd moved her to a special unit, away from other patients. Two security guards stood outside her door, but they let Anna and Thomas pass without question. Inside, more guards watched the monitors, which showed live feeds from cameras pointed at Eleanor's chest. Anna could see them now, the birds—dark shapes moving behind her mother's ribs, their movements gentle but unmistakable.
"How many?" she asked one of the guards.
"Seven that we can count," he answered. "But they move around a lot. Hard to keep track."
Eleanor looked smaller than she had that morning, lost in the hospital bed. Her breathing was shallow but steady, each inhalation lifting her chest like a wave. Anna sat beside her, taking her hand. The skin felt papery, but warm—warmer than it had been in weeks.
"The oncology team is baffled," Dr. Marcus said, appearing in the doorway. He looked rumpled, his usual precision undone by the strangeness of the situation. "The cancer seems to be... well, the birds appear to be eating it. Consuming the tumors. We can see them picking at the masses, taking them apart bit by bit."
Anna watched the monitors, where the birds moved through her mother's body like shadows through leaves. "What happens when they're done? When there's nothing left to eat?"
Dr. Marcus spread his hands. "We don't know. Nothing like this has ever been documented. We don't even know how they're surviving in there, how they're breathing. By all rights, it should be impossible."
"Mom always said impossible things happen all the time," Mei said from the doorway. She must have followed them to the hospital. "We just don't usually notice."
Anna looked at her daughter—sixteen, brilliant, already taller than Eleanor would ever be again. Mei had her grandmother's eyes, dark and knowing, seeing things others missed. She came to stand beside Anna, both of them watching Eleanor breathe her impossible birds.
"I remember," Mei said softly, "when I was little, Grandma used to tell me stories about birds that lived inside people. She said they were made of all the words we never say, all the feelings we keep inside. She said sometimes they got so strong they had to fly away."
Anna felt something shift in her chest, like wings unfolding. She remembered those stories too, though she'd forgotten them until now. Eleanor had told them on quiet afternoons when Thomas was drinking and Anna was hiding from her own failures, stories about people whose hearts grew wings, whose lungs filled with songs they'd never dared to sing.
The monitors beeped, showing a change in Eleanor's breathing pattern. One of the birds was moving up her bronchial tree, its wings brushing against her throat. Anna watched as her mother's lips parted slightly, hearing a sound so soft it might have been imagination—the ghost of a song, a whispered secret, a tiny exhalation of truth.
Dr. Marcus stepped forward, reaching for the call button, but Anna caught his hand.
"Wait," she said. "Let her breathe."
The next three days developed their own strange rhythm. Anna and Thomas took shifts sitting with Eleanor, watching the birds move through her body like living x-rays. Mei came after school, doing her homework in the corner while the monitors chirped and beeped. The birds grew larger, or perhaps they were easier to see now—dark shapes with distinct wings and heads, their species still impossible to determine.
The cancer was disappearing. Dr. Marcus showed them the scans: tumors that had been solid masses were now fragmented, being dismantled piece by piece by tiny beaks and claws. Eleanor's blood work improved daily. Her color was better. Even sedated, she looked more alive than she had in months.
On the fourth day, she opened her eyes.
Anna was alone with her when it happened, reading aloud from one of Eleanor's favorite books—a collection of Emily Dickinson poems. She'd just finished "Hope is the thing with feathers" when her mother's hand tightened in hers.
"Mom?"
Eleanor's eyes focused slowly, finding Anna's face. Her lips moved, forming words without sound. Anna leaned closer.
"I can hear them singing," Eleanor whispered.
Before Anna could respond, the monitors erupted in a cascade of alarms. The birds were moving, all seven at once, their wings beating against Eleanor's ribs like hearts trying to escape. Dr. Marcus ran in with a team of nurses, but Eleanor held up a trembling hand to stop them.
"It's all right," she said, her voice stronger than it had been in months. "They're ready. I'm ready."
Anna watched in wonder as her mother sat up, her movements careful but sure. The monitors showed the birds gathering in her lungs, arranging themselves like notes in a song. Eleanor took a deep breath, and Anna thought she could see shadows moving beneath her skin, pressing against her chest from the inside.
"Mom," Anna started to say, but Eleanor shook her head.
"I've been keeping them in so long," she said. "All the things I never said, all the songs I never sang, all the feelings I thought I had to contain. But they were never meant to stay caged forever."
She turned to Anna, her eyes bright with something that looked like joy.
"The hardest part of raising you," she said, "was teaching you to be careful when I should have taught you to be free. I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for all the times I made you measure your life in careful cups instead of letting you spill over the edges."
The monitors were going crazy now, but nobody moved to intervene. They all watched as Eleanor stood, walked to the window. Outside, the sky was turning the deep blue of evening, stars beginning to appear.
"Will it hurt?" Anna asked, not sure if she meant the birds leaving or everything that would come after.
Eleanor smiled. "Everything hurts, my love. That's how you know you're alive."
She opened the window. The April air rushed in, carrying the scent of spring flowers and new grass. Eleanor took another deep breath, and Anna saw them clearly for the first time—seven small shadows rising through her mother's throat, taking flight on wings made of all the things she'd kept inside for so long.
They were swallows, Anna realized as they emerged—tiny, perfect barn swallows with forked tails and dark, flashing wings. They circled the room once, their wingbeats stirring papers and making the monitors dance with interference. Then they were gone, disappearing into the darkening sky like secrets finally set free.
Eleanor stood at the window for a long moment, breathing the spring air. When she turned back to the room, she looked different—lighter somehow, as if the birds had taken some heavy thing with them when they flew.
The cancer was gone. Dr. Marcus confirmed it the next day, looking through scans that showed clear lungs, clean tissue, not a trace of the tumors that had been eating her alive just days before. He had no explanation for any of it—the birds, the healing, the transformation. He wrote in his reports that the tumors had responded to treatment, leaving out any mention of wings or songs or impossible things.
But the changes didn't stop with Eleanor's healing. Over the next few weeks, as spring deepened into summer, Anna began noticing birds everywhere—not inside people, but around them, as if the world had suddenly filled with wings. She saw them gathering on power lines, building nests in unexpected places, singing at all hours of the day and night.
More than that, she began noticing the birds inside people's voices—the way Thomas's words had a new lightness when he spoke about his sobriety, the way Mei's laugh took flight when she talked about her dreams for the future, the way Dr. Marcus hummed to himself now when he thought no one was listening.
Eleanor came home on a Thursday, exactly two weeks after the birds had flown. She stood in Anna's kitchen, looking at the rice still scattered across the counter from that interrupted dinner.
"You didn't clean it up," she said.
"No," Anna admitted. "I couldn't bring myself to measure anything after... after the birds."
Eleanor picked up a grain of rice, held it to the light. "You know what I've learned?" she said. "Perfect measurements don't matter nearly as much as we think they do. Sometimes the best things come from letting go of the rules."
That night, they cooked dinner together—not carefully measured portions but handfuls of rice, pinches of spice, ingredients added by instinct rather than recipe. Thomas opened windows instead of wine bottles. Mei taught them a song she'd learned at school. Dr. Marcus came for his usual Tuesday dinner and brought a guitar no one knew he could play.
And everywhere, birds sang—outside the windows, in the trees, in their voices when they laughed, in their hearts when they remembered how close they'd come to losing everything, in their souls when they realized how much they'd gained.
Later, Anna found a nest in her garden—a small, perfect thing made of twigs and string and bits of paper. Inside, she discovered scraps of her mother's hospital bracelet, woven into the walls like a reminder that sometimes the most important things we build are made from what we let go.
She left the nest where it was, but she began leaving out pieces of yarn, bright ribbons, fragments of poems written on rice paper. Each morning, she watched as birds she couldn't quite identify took these offerings, weaving them into nests she couldn't quite see, building homes for songs that hadn't yet been sung.
Eleanor started teaching again that fall—not chemistry as she had before, but art classes at the community center. She showed her students how to draw birds in flight, how to capture movement in stillness, how to see the wings hidden in everyday things. Her paintings hung in the hospital corridor where she'd once been a patient, full of dark-winged shapes that might have been birds or might have been something else entirely.
Mei wrote a story about it for her college applications—not about the birds themselves, but about the spaces they left behind, the way healing sometimes comes in forms we don't expect, the way love sometimes has wings. She got into every school she applied to, but chose the one closest to home, saying she wasn't quite ready to fly too far away.
Thomas started building birdhouses in his workshop, each one unique, each one containing some small secret—a hidden compartment, a tiny window, a perch that caught the morning light just so. He gave them away to neighbors, to strangers, to anyone who looked like they might need a safe place for something wild to live.
Dr. Marcus continued coming to Tuesday dinners, though there was no medical reason for it anymore. He brought his guitar and played songs that sounded like wingbeats, like heartbeats, like the space between what we can explain and what we can only witness. Sometimes, when the music was just right, Anna thought she could see shadows moving in the air around them, like memories of flight, like promises of things still to come.
And Anna? She learned to cook without measuring, to love without counting, to live without always checking to make sure everything was in its proper place. She kept rice scattered across her counter, not as untidiness but as reminder—that small things have their own weight, that mistakes can become gifts, that sometimes the most important measurements are the ones we choose not to make.
She never saw another person with birds living inside them, but she learned to recognize the signs—a certain quality of silence, a particular way of breathing, a look in the eyes that suggested wings waiting to unfold. She learned to listen for the songs people kept inside, to watch for the moments when those songs might be ready to take flight.
Years later, when people asked her about that strange spring—about her mother's miraculous recovery, about the birds that may or may not have lived in Eleanor's lungs—Anna would just smile and point to the sky, where swallows wheeled and danced in the fading light, carrying secrets too beautiful to keep contained.
"Some things," she would say, quoting her mother, "are too true to be explained. They can only be set free."
And somewhere, in the space between one breath and the next, seven small birds continued their flight, carrying with them all the unspoken words, all the untold stories, all the love that was too vast to be measured in any careful cup.
Eleanor lived ten more years after the birds flew away. When she died—peacefully, in her sleep, on a spring morning much like the one when the birds had taken flight—they found her last painting still wet on the easel. It showed a woman opening her mouth to sing, and from her lips emerged not notes but wings, not words but freedom, not an ending but a beginning.
At her funeral, the sky filled with swallows, though it was the wrong season for them. Nobody remarked on this impossible thing, just as nobody had remarked on the impossible healing a decade before. They simply watched the birds dance against the clouds, carrying their secrets, their songs, their stories too wonderful and too true to ever be contained.
And in Anna's garden, in the nest that had appeared that first spring, new birds were building new homes, weaving bright threads into their walls, preparing spaces for all the things that were still waiting to take flight.
The Book of Broken Things
Nobody chooses to be a repair person in a throwaway world. I inherited the fix-it shop from my grandfather, who inherited it from his father, who started it in 1932 repairing radios during the Depression. By the time it landed in my lap, the Westside Fix-It Shop was a relic—a cramped storefront stuffed with broken appliances, obsolete tools, and the lingering scent of solder and machine oil.
I kept it running more out of obligation than passion. Most days, I spent my time explaining to people that their devices were designed to be replaced, not repaired. "Planned obsolescence," I'd say, watching their faces fall. "It would cost more to fix than to buy new."
Then Marion Wu walked in with her grandfather's radio.
It was a rainy Tuesday morning in October. I was at my workbench, half-heartedly poking at a toaster that probably wasn't worth saving, when the bell above the door chimed. The woman who entered was maybe seventy, carrying something wrapped in a faded quilt.
"Are you the one who fixes things?" she asked, carefully setting her bundle on the counter.
"I try," I said. "But honestly, these days it's usually cheaper to—"
She unwrapped the quilt, revealing a 1940s Zenith tabletop radio. The wood cabinet was scratched but solid, its art deco curves still elegant after all these years.
"It was my grandfather's," she said. "He brought it with him when he came to America in 1947. It played every morning until last week." She touched the dial gently. "I know I could buy a new one. That's not the point."
I picked up the radio, feeling its weight. Modern electronics are all plastic and air, designed to be light, cheap, disposable. This was different—solid wood, metal, glass tubes that glowed like tiny suns when powered up.
"I'll take a look," I said. "But I should warn you—parts for these old tubes are hard to find."
Marion smiled. "Check the back room," she said. "Behind the filing cabinet, there's a cardboard box labeled 'Radio Parts - 1940s.' My grandfather used to work here."
I stared at her. "Your grandfather was Henry Wu?"
She nodded. "Dad said he was the best radio man in the city. Worked here until 1962."
I'd heard stories about Henry Wu from my grandfather. He'd been legendary in the repair community, known for fixing things others had declared hopeless. But I'd never connected those stories to the neat row of boxes in the back room, filled with carefully labeled components.
The next morning, I opened the shop early and retrieved the box Marion had mentioned. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper and organized with military precision, were dozens of radio tubes, resistors, and other components—a time capsule of 1940s electronics.
Working on the radio became an archaeology project. Each component I removed told a story. Some had been repaired before, tiny soldering marks showing where skilled hands had extended their life. Others bore handwritten labels in precise Chinese characters.
I found myself imagining Henry Wu at this same workbench, perhaps teaching my grandfather the secrets of these machines. Both men were gone now, but their knowledge lived on in the carefully preserved parts and tools they'd left behind.
The radio's problem turned out to be relatively simple—a burnt-out tube and some corroded connections. But as I worked, I discovered something else. Tucked inside the cabinet was a small notebook, its pages yellow with age. It was filled with repair notes in Henry's neat handwriting, documenting not just technical details but the stories behind each fix.
"Johnson family radio - fixed power transformer. Their son overseas. Need music to feel connected."
"Mrs. Rodriguez's set - replaced speaker. Uses it to teach English to neighborhood kids."
"Rev. Miller's radio - repaired antenna. Sunday services depend on it."
Each entry reminded me that these weren't just machines—they were connections to people's lives, their memories, their hopes.
When Marion returned a week later, I had the radio working perfectly. The warm glow of the tubes lit up the dial, and the rich sound of a jazz station filled the shop.
"I found this inside," I said, showing her the notebook. "I thought you might want it."
She opened it carefully, running her fingers over her grandfather's handwriting. "I remember him working on these," she said. "He used to say that every broken thing had a story, and fixing it meant becoming part of that story."
She looked up at me. "Do you know why he left China?"
I shook my head.
"He was a professor of electrical engineering in Shanghai. But during the war, he used his skills to repair radios for the resistance. When things got dangerous, he had to leave everything behind—except his knowledge." She smiled. "He always said America was the place where broken things—and broken people—could be fixed."
That conversation changed something in me. I started looking at the shop differently, seeing it not as a relic but as a repository of stories and skills passed down through generations.
I began keeping my own notebook, documenting not just repairs but the stories behind them:
"Emma's 1950s mixer - inherited from her grandmother. Still uses it to make Christmas cookies from the family recipe."
"Mr. Patel's turntable - bought with his first paycheck in 1975. His daughter's learning to love vinyl."
"Ms. Chen's sewing machine - survived three generations and two continents. Still making wedding dresses."
Word spread. People started bringing in things I'd never seen before—antique clocks, vintage cameras, musical instruments with histories longer than my lifetime. Each repair became a puzzle, requiring not just technical skill but detective work, imagination, and often help from unexpected sources.
Like the day someone brought in a 1960s guitar amplifier. I mentioned it to Marion during one of her visits (she'd become a regular, often bringing coffee and stories about her grandfather).
"Oh, Jimmy Chen used to repair those," she said. "He had a shop over on Elm Street. I think his daughter still has his old manuals."
One connection led to another. Soon I had a network of former repair people, collectors, and enthusiasts sharing knowledge, hunting down parts, teaching me skills that were in danger of being lost.
The shop's back room became a library of repair manuals, technical documents, and handwritten notes spanning nearly a century. But more importantly, it became a community hub. Old-timers would stop by to share stories and expertise. Young people, tired of disposable electronics, came to learn traditional repair skills.
One day, a teenager brought in a broken laptop. While I worked on it, he noticed the Zenith radio on my workbench.
"That's ancient," he said. "Why not just buy a new one?"
I told him Marion's story, then showed him how the radio worked—the elegant simplicity of its circuits, the warm glow of its tubes, the rich sound that no tiny speaker could match.
"Modern things are designed to be mysterious," I explained. "To keep you from understanding how they work. But these old machines want to teach you their secrets."
His eyes lit up. "Could you show me more?"
That's how the Saturday repair workshops started. Now, every weekend, the shop fills with people of all ages learning to fix things. We work on everything from vintage electronics to modern appliances, sharing tools, knowledge, and stories.
Marion still visits regularly. Last week, she brought in a box of her grandfather's old tools, each one labeled with its purpose and history.
"He would have loved this," she said, watching a young girl learn to solder under the guidance of a retired electronics teacher. "Not just the fixing, but the sharing."
I looked around the shop—at the shelves lined with repair manuals and notebooks, the workbenches where multiple generations worked side by side, the restored radios and record players and appliances waiting to return home. The air still smelled of solder and machine oil, but now it also carried the energy of discovery, the satisfaction of bringing broken things back to life.
On my workbench sits Henry Wu's notebook, joined now by dozens of others documenting repairs and stories spanning nearly a century. Each entry is a reminder that everything broken has a history, and every fix creates a connection—between past and present, between people and their cherished possessions, between generations of fixers sharing their knowledge.
Last month, a reporter asked me why I keep the shop running when it would be easier to sell the building and retire.
"Because some things are worth fixing," I said, thinking of all the stories and connections that had grown from Marion's first visit with her grandfather's radio. "And sometimes, fixing broken things helps fix broken connections too."
The bell above the door chimes, and a new customer enters, carrying something carefully wrapped. Another story begins, another chance to connect, another broken thing waiting to be understood and restored.
In a throwaway world, we're the keepers of connections—to objects, to stories, to each other. Every repair is an act of rebellion against disposability, a thread connecting past to present to future. And in that connection, we find something that can't be bought new or thrown away: the simple magic of understanding how things work, the satisfaction of making them whole again, and the joy of passing that knowledge on.
The Sound of Breaking
I was there to document failure. As a photojournalist specializing in urban decay, I'd spent the last decade capturing the slow death of American manufacturing towns. The story was always the same: shuttered factories, empty storefronts, rusting signs advertising businesses long gone. Millbrook, Ohio would be no different.
The assignment seemed straightforward enough—a piece about the closure of Millbrook Glass Works, the latest casualty in a long line of traditional craftworks being crushed by overseas competition. The factory had been operating since 1892, one of the last hand-blown glass facilities in the country. Now it was just another statistic, another story of tradition giving way to automation and globalization.
I parked my rental car on Main Street, grimacing at the familiar signs of decline. Plywood covered several store windows. Paint peeled from Victorian-era buildings. The only businesses that looked active were a dollar store and a vape shop. I'd seen it all before, could already envision the black-and-white photos I'd take—stark, dramatic shots that would illustrate the death of another American industry.
The glass factory sat at the edge of town, a sprawling brick complex with tall windows and multiple chimneys. Steam still rose from one stack, which surprised me. I'd thought they'd already shut down production.
"You must be the photographer." A woman emerged from a side door, wiping her hands on a work apron. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and safety glasses hung around her neck. "I'm Helen Martinez, plant manager. Though I guess 'former' plant manager now."
I extended my hand. "Jack Chen. Thanks for letting me document the closure."
"Closure?" She raised an eyebrow. "Who told you we were closing?"
I pulled out my notebook, checking the assignment details. "My editor said the plant was shutting down this week. End of an era, death of traditional craftsmanship—that kind of story."
Helen laughed. "Come with me."
She led me through the door and into what felt like a scene from another century. The space was cavernous, lit by a combination of industrial fixtures and natural light streaming through massive windows. The air shimmered with heat from multiple furnaces. And everywhere, there was movement—people working in coordinated teams, passing long metal blowpipes back and forth, shaping molten glass with tools that looked unchanged since the Middle Ages.
"Does this look like a factory that's closing?" Helen asked.
I watched as a young woman dipped a blowpipe into a furnace, gathering a glowing blob of molten glass. With practiced movements, she rolled it on a metal table, shaping it while constantly turning the pipe. An older man worked beside her, offering quiet instructions as she brought the piece to her lips and blew gently, creating a perfect bubble.
"I don't understand," I said. "The article said traditional glass-making couldn't compete anymore."
"Oh, we're definitely changing," Helen said, leading me past rows of workers. "But not in the way you think. See that group over there?"
She pointed to a cluster of people gathered around a computer screen. They looked out of place among the ancient furnaces and traditional tools.
"That's our design team. They're working with a software company in Silicon Valley, developing an app that lets customers watch their pieces being made in real-time. We're installing cameras by each workstation next week."
As we walked, I noticed other incongruous details. A teenager was livestreaming a glassblowing demonstration on her phone while an older craftsman explained the process. Another worker was photographing finished pieces against a professional lighting setup for what looked like an online catalog.
"Five years ago, we were struggling," Helen admitted. "Traditional retailers were buying less, costs were rising, and we couldn't compete with mass-produced imports. Then Rebecca—" she pointed to the young woman I'd seen earlier "—joined us right out of art school. She looked at our operation with fresh eyes."
We stopped at a workstation where an elderly craftsman was teaching a group of people in business casual attire how to gather glass from the furnace.
"Corporate team-building workshops," Helen explained. "Turns out executives will pay good money to spend a day learning an ancient craft. Rebecca saw that we weren't just a factory—we were keepers of a tradition that people are hungry to connect with."
The executive currently holding the blowpipe let out a delighted laugh as she successfully shaped a small glass bubble. Her colleagues applauded.
"We still make traditional pieces," Helen continued, gesturing to a display of elegant vases and bowls. "But now we also offer experiences. Classes. Apprenticeships. Custom pieces where clients can watch their orders being made from anywhere in the world. We're not just selling glass anymore—we're selling connection to a process that's barely changed in two thousand years."
She led me to a small studio space where Rebecca, the young woman she'd mentioned earlier, was working on what looked like a collaboration between ancient technique and modern art. The piece incorporated traditional glassblowing methods but featured bold, contemporary colors and shapes.
"This is for a tech company in Austin," Rebecca explained, not taking her eyes off her work. "They commissioned pieces for their new headquarters. Said they wanted something that represented the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and innovation." She smiled. "Turns out that's kind of our specialty now."
Over the next few hours, I found myself setting aside my camera more often than using it. Every corner of the factory seemed to tell a story of tradition finding new life through unexpected adaptation. A master craftsman with forty years of experience worked beside a social media manager half his age, each learning from the other. Traditional techniques were being preserved not by resisting change, but by embracing it in ways that honored the core of the craft.
"Here's the thing about glassblowing," Helen said as we watched Rebecca and her mentor complete their piece. "It's always been about transformation. You take something brittle and make it flexible. You heat it up to change its nature. Maybe that's what we needed to do as a company too."
The finished piece emerged from the annealing oven the next morning—a swirling sculpture that somehow managed to look both ancient and futuristic. I found myself taking photos in color rather than black and white, trying to capture the way traditional methods and modern vision had combined to create something entirely new.
"You know what the real story is?" Helen asked as I packed up my equipment. "It's not about an industry dying. It's about the way it's being reborn. Every piece that comes out of these furnaces carries part of a tradition that's been passed down through generations. But now, instead of just preserving that tradition, we're helping it evolve."
I thought about my portfolio of black-and-white images documenting industrial decline. They weren't wrong—plenty of traditional industries were struggling or gone. But here in Millbrook, something different was happening. The glass factory hadn't survived by freezing itself in time, but by finding ways to make its ancient craft relevant to a new generation.
As I drove out of town, I passed those same Victorian buildings I'd dismissed earlier. Now I noticed signs of life I'd missed before—an art gallery displaying glass pieces in a restored storefront, a cafe advertising glassblowing demonstrations with your morning coffee, a co-working space that had opened to serve the growing number of digital professionals drawn to the area by the factory's innovative approach.
My editor wasn't happy when I told her the story had changed. "We needed something about the death of traditional industry," she complained. "Not some feel-good piece about adaptation."
"But that's the real story," I insisted. "It's not about an industry dying. It's about the way traditional crafts can find new life if we're willing to look at them differently. It's about the possibility of transformation."
In the end, the piece ran as a cover story—not in the business section as originally planned, but in the Sunday magazine. The photos showed more than just the technical process of glassblowing. They captured moments of connection: young apprentices learning from master craftsmen, executives discovering the joy of creating something with their hands, artists finding ways to honor tradition while pushing boundaries.
Six months later, I returned to Millbrook. The factory had just launched a virtual reality experience that let people around the world witness the glassblowing process in immersive detail. The waiting list for workshops was months long. Three new businesses had opened on Main Street.
I found Helen in her office, now equipped with multiple monitors showing livestreams from various workstations. On one screen, a customer in Japan watched as her commissioned piece took shape. On another, a class of high school students observed a master craftsman demonstrate techniques that had been passed down through generations.
"You know what I love most about glass?" Helen asked, gesturing to the streams of people flowing through the factory floor. "It looks fragile, but it's incredibly resilient. Heat it up enough, and it can become anything. Sometimes tradition is like that too. What looks like breaking is really just transformation."
I thought about the story I'd come to tell originally—another eulogy for a dying industry—and the very different story I'd found instead. Sometimes our preconceptions are like glass too, I realized. They can seem solid and unchangeable until something or someone shows us how they can be transformed into something new.
That evening, I sat in on one of the factory's twilight workshops. As the sun set through the tall windows, the furnaces cast an orange glow across the faces of people learning an ancient craft in thoroughly modern ways. The sound of breaking glass occasionally rang out—an inevitable part of the learning process—but it no longer sounded like failure to me. It sounded like transformation.
The Last Performance
I stood in the wings of St. Mark's Auditorium, clipboard clutched to my chest, watching the chaos unfold on stage. Two weeks before opening night, and our community theater's production of "The Music Man" was falling apart. As stage manager, I'd overseen dozens of shows, but this one was different. This was going to be my last.
After twenty years of volunteer work with the Mercury Valley Community Players, I'd finally had enough. Community theater was dying. Audiences were dwindling, donations were down, and trying to compete with Netflix and endless streaming options felt like fighting a losing battle. But what really broke me was watching our talent pool shrink year after year. Young people weren't interested anymore, and our core group was aging out. This production's Harold Hill was being played by Joe Martinez, who'd been our romantic lead for fifteen years. He was sixty-two now.
"Places for 'Ya Got Trouble'!" I called out, trying to inject enthusiasm into my voice. The cast scrambled to their positions, most of them moving with the careful deliberation of people who'd left their athletic years far behind. I checked my watch. We were already forty minutes behind schedule.
That's when I heard the commotion at the back door. Sarah Chen, our assistant director, was arguing with someone. I hurried down the aisle, ready to deal with whatever new crisis had emerged.
"Please," a young voice was saying. "We just want to watch."
I rounded the corner to find a group of teenagers—maybe fifteen of them—clustered around the door. They wore matching blue t-shirts with "Roosevelt High Drama Club" printed across the front.
"Absolutely not," I said, stepping in front of Sarah. "This is a closed rehearsal. We're already behind schedule."
A girl with bright purple hair stepped forward. "Mrs. Rodriguez told us you guys were rehearsing 'The Music Man.' We're doing it too, at school. She said maybe we could observe, get some tips?"
"We don't have time for—" I began, but Sarah cut me off.
"Let them watch," she said quietly. "What can it hurt?"
I wanted to explain exactly what it could hurt—our concentration, our schedule, our dignity. These kids would probably spend the whole time on their phones, or worse, filming our struggles to post on social media. But Sarah was already ushering them in.
"Just stay quiet and stay in the back," I hissed as they filed past. Several of them were whispering and pointing at our set, which I suddenly saw through their eyes—the painted flats that had been recycled through at least six different shows, the wobbly porch steps that creaked with every step. I felt my cheeks burn.
Back on stage, we finally got through "Ya Got Trouble," though Joe had to stop twice to catch his breath. I didn't dare look at our teenage audience. Next up was "The Wells Fargo Wagon," one of our biggest ensemble numbers. As the cast assembled, I noticed some of the kids had crept closer, standing in the side aisles.
The piano introduction began, and something unexpected happened. As our cast started to sing, young voices joined in from the back of the theater. The Roosevelt students knew every word. Their energy was infectious, and I watched in amazement as our performers straightened up, sang louder, moved with more purpose.
During the break, instead of rushing to their phones, the students swarmed the stage. They had questions about everything—the choreography, the staging, the character choices. Joe found himself surrounded by three boys who wanted to know how he approached Harold Hill's fast-paced patter songs.
"The trick is in the breathing," he was explaining, demonstrating the technique he'd developed. "See, if you break it down into phrases..."
The boys tried it themselves, stumbling at first but improving with each attempt. Joe was beaming in a way I hadn't seen in years.
Sarah appeared at my elbow. "Their drama teacher called me last week," she admitted. "They're struggling with their production. No budget, no experience with this style of show. She asked if they could come observe."
I watched as Margaret Wilson, our Marian the Librarian, demonstrated the proper posture for hitting high notes to a cluster of eager girls. Margaret had been talking about retiring from performing, saying she was too old for ingenue roles. But right now, sharing her decades of vocal training, she looked energized.
"Hey," the purple-haired girl called out, "would you guys want to do a combined rehearsal sometime? We could run the big numbers together!"
"Absolutely not," I started to say, but the words died in my throat. Our cast was nodding enthusiastically. Even our most curmudgeonly members were smiling.
"We could do it here," Joe suggested. "Your stage is probably too small for the full 'Seventy-Six Trombones' choreography."
"Our stage is tiny," one of the boys agreed. "And the acoustics are terrible. This place is amazing."
I looked around the auditorium—really looked at it for the first time in years. Yes, it was old. Yes, some of the seats were worn. But the soaring ceiling, the elaborate moldings, the perfect sightlines... this was a real theater, built in an era when live performance was the heart of entertainment. To these kids, it wasn't outdated. It was grand.
Over the next two weeks, something extraordinary happened. We held three combined rehearsals. The students brought an energy that transformed our show, while our experienced performers shared techniques and tricks that no YouTube tutorial could teach. Joe worked with his teenage counterpart on breathing exercises. Margaret gave mini voice lessons during breaks. Our choreographer, a former professional dancer now in his seventies, found himself surrounded by kids eager to learn the authentic movements of different historical periods.
But more than that, stories started flowing both ways. The students talked about their struggles with their school production—the lack of resources, the pressure to make it "relevant," the fear that nobody would come to see it. Our veterans shared tales of disasters turned triumphs, of performances that went wrong but taught them valuable lessons, of audiences touched by moments of live theater magic.
"You know what's funny?" the purple-haired girl—Sophia—said to me during our final joint rehearsal. "We almost didn't do 'The Music Man.' Some people said it was too old-fashioned, that we should do something modern. But these songs are actually hard. The dancing is complex. The comedy requires real timing. It's like... it's like a master class in everything theater can be."
Opening night arrived. I stood in my usual spot in the wings, but something felt different. The energy was electric. Word had spread about our collaboration, and the auditorium was packed—not just with our usual audience, but with students, parents, and teachers from Roosevelt High.
As the overture began, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Sarah.
"Look," she whispered, pointing to the back of the theater.
The Roosevelt drama students had come in full costume from their own rehearsal. They were standing in the aisle, silently mouthing along with every line, their faces glowing with excitement and admiration.
The show was magnificent. Joe nailed every patter song, his performance enriched by weeks of teaching his techniques to others. Margaret's voice soared with renewed confidence. Even our ensemble numbers had a fresh vitality, inspired by the young energy we'd absorbed.
During the curtain call, the Roosevelt students led a standing ovation that seemed to go on forever. After the house lights came up, the theater stayed full as audiences and performers mingled, sharing stories and congratulations. I overheard snippets of conversation about carpooling to Roosevelt's upcoming production, about future collaborations, about workshop ideas.
In my office later that night, I looked at my resignation letter, still saved on my laptop. I thought about what I'd almost given up on—not just a theater or a show, but a living connection between generations, a bridge between past and present, a way for art and experience to flow in both directions.
I deleted the letter.
The next morning, I started drafting a new proposal instead. The Mercury Valley Community Players would partner with Roosevelt High's drama department to create a summer theater program. Our experienced performers would teach master classes. The students would help us update our social media presence and brainstorm outreach ideas. We'd share resources, combine audiences, and learn from each other.
Six months later, I stood in the wings again, watching a production of "West Side Story" that combined teenage dancers with our veteran actors. The audience was the largest we'd had in a decade. But more importantly, the energy in the theater crackled with the kind of electricity that only live performance can generate—the thrill of different generations, backgrounds, and experiences coming together to create something larger than themselves.
Sophia appeared beside me, now wearing her own headset and carrying a clipboard as student stage manager.
"Five minutes to places," she said professionally, then grinned. "Unless you want to call it?"
I smiled and raised my voice: "Places for Act One, everyone! Places please!"
As the cast moved to their positions—teenage Jets mixing with performers who'd been on this stage for decades—I thought about how close I'd come to writing off community theater entirely. I'd seen only what was being lost, not what could be gained. I'd forgotten that theater isn't just about preserving traditions; it's about forming connections, about creating spaces where different generations can learn from each other, where experience can meet enthusiasm, where stories can bridge any gap.
The house lights dimmed. The overture began. And in the magical darkness that comes just before a show begins, I felt the future of community theater breathing all around me—not dying, but evolving, growing, finding new life in the space between what was and what could be.
As the curtain rose, I heard the soft sound of our teenage crew members singing along with the opening notes, just as they had that first day during "The Music Man." But this time, I joined them, adding my voice to theirs, embracing the beautiful noise of past and present harmonizing together.