Photographs
For April 2025, during Autistic Acceptance Month, I am writing one short piece of fiction each day. The Christian Bible verses that serve as titles are related to each piece, but sometimes only very loosely.
| 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 |
| 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Disclaimer: I am a Level 1 Autistic adult. These stories are fiction and based largely on my own experiences. I do not speak for all Autistic people, and I am not a professional therapist. I'm just a person trying to make my way through the world the best I can.
Luke 5:16 (April 1)
Jessamyn sat on a bench in the middle of the city park, having counted the cement blocks it had taken to get from the curb next to the lot where she’d parked the car to the bench she was on now (twelve). The path was curved, bordered on either side by neatly manicured grass that was a chemical green, suggesting it had been so drenched in insecticide that it was likely a danger to the various dogs that people brought through the park. She was wearing headphones, the kind with the soft cups that covered her ears entirely, but she wasn’t listening to anything except the rolling hum of the silence they created. The goal wasn’t to let sound in, but rather to keep sound out, because the world was overwhelming enough without having to process the sound of cars and trucks rolling past on the street that was far enough away to not be a real danger but close enough to cause her anxiety to dial up, just a little, when what she just wanted to do was sit in peace on this park bench and not think too much about the toxins in the air from the insecticide and rather just enjoy the warmth of the sun on her cheeks and the light breeze on her skin, and to just be, to just embrace the now without having to push through all the maybes of the future and the why-did-I’s of the past. And so, eyes closed, legs crossed into applesauce, tennis shoes on the ground beneath her, that is what she did: She simply was. For those fleeting moments, she simply was.
Proverbs 18:15 (April 2)
“My favorite movie? Well, that’s a difficult question. My favorite genre is sci-fi fantasy, so the easy answer would be Star Wars. The first one, which was only renamed A New Hope in later releases. But if we’re honest, despite the way that it was a cultural phenomenon and a special fx powerhouse, it was fairly derivative and the script has a lot of flaws. This is controversial, but I think the best film in the series, as a film taken out of context, is The Last Jedi. That’s the eighth one. At the same time, it’s also the weakest entry into the series. It just doesn't belong with the others. A misfit, a lot like me. And if my favorite movie is the one I’ve seen more than any others, there are some cheesy comedies like Amazon Women on the Moon that I've watched more times than I can count, and I quote them all the time (‘Ain’t no effing Thelma here!’), but it feels strange to call them my favorites because they’re just not quality movies, you know? Like, is a favorite movie one you watch a lot, or is it one you think is like the perfection of movie-making? For the latter, there’s something like A Clockwork Orange, but that’s not something I want to watch over and over because it’s so brutal. And you know, Kubrick deviated from the novel in a key way, specifically, making the protagonist Alex and his droogies several years older. Imagine if that film had been made with a boy the right age. It was barely legal in the United States as it was. It was originally released with an X, but Kubrick cut it back just enough. There’s no way he could have done that with a 15 year old. Malcolm McDowell was nearly 30 when the movie was made. And then there the movies that feel like serious movies, and have a certain place in my heart, but which, I don’t know, they just don’t feel like favorites so much as fond memories. Like Labyrinth and Brother from Another Planet. Everyone’s seen Labyrinth, but have you seen Brother from Another Planet? Definitely worth checking out, very quirky, but also a product of its time. I haven’t seen it in years. I used to have it on VHS tape, that shows how old it is. How old I am. So anyway, back to the original question: I guess the answer is, I don’t really know. Get back to me. I’ll think about it some more.”
In the awkward silence that follows, I remember two things: The first is that I was just supposed to give a quick answer; the point was for them to get to know me, not for me to give an essay response to a short answer quiz. But the second is, how will a short answer show who I am, if I’m an essay response kind of person?
Mark 9:36 (April 3)
Had they come in through the window? Veronica was certain that she’d locked it last night, but this morning it was open, just a crack. Had she forgotten to lock it? Had a memory lapse allowed them in?
Or maybe they had already been in the closet. Veronica’s eldest, Jase, had warned her about that. Because he was seven, though, she had dismissed his anxieties as childhood fears.
Perhaps they lived in the shadows under the bed. Could that be an opening to their realm? She was blaming herself for the window, but there was nothing to be done against a portal to a shadow realm hidden in the shadows under the bed.
Regardless of the how, and regardless of the why, Veronica could tell that the creature lying in Jake’s crib was not Jake. It was, to be clear, an excellent simulacrum. They had gotten so many of the key details correct: The hair, the softness of the skin, the padding of fat in all the proper places.
But there was something in the eyes, a distance, almost a deadness. Jake had loved to meet her eye contact, but this… pseudo Jake… looked everywhere but at her. Like it knew that her seeing its soul would give it away.
And there was something in the noises it made, or rather, didn’t make anymore. The playful kicking was still there, the air of joy was still there. Again, an excellent simulacrum, but oddly quiet.
So there was still just something a little bit off, enough for Veronica to know that Jake had been taken, and this had been left in his place.
Titus 2:8 (April 4)
1
Michael didn’t like this.
He was watching out the car window and rocking gently. These were not the streets of home. His city was small, and he knew most of the streets, and these were not those places.
His father was driving the car. His father looked very nervous, and very angry too. But these were not the streets of home.
Michael tapped a few symbols on his communication board and pressed the audio button. A mechanical voice said, “Me hungry. Eat now.”
He looked sternly at the dashboard in front of him and waited. His father ignored it so he hit the replay button. “Me hungry. Eat now.”
Ignored again, his rocking got more insistent. Something was very wrong. His father didn’t live with them anymore, so it was strange when he’d picked Michael up from the school today, and now they were on this very large street with no houses and just lots of grass and billboards, and they were going way too fast, and Michael did not like this. At all.
Pressing his eyes shut, trying to keep the panicky emotions in check, he pressed the replay button. “Me hungry. Eat now.”
At last, his father spoke: “We can’t right now. I’ll get you something to eat when we get where we’re going.”
Replay. Again. Michael needed the car to stop. He needed to figure out what was going on. None of this was right. And then a fifth time: “Me hungry. Eat now.”
The voice, the volume, the cadence of the electronic voice was the same each time. Michael found a small bit of comfort in that regularity. But he could tell from the way his father gripped the steering wheel tighter that it was having the intended effect of being that much more annoying.
“Fine, just stop that. We’ll get something at the next exit. But we can’t take long.”
Michael went back to looking out the window, watching the grass pass by far too quickly.
2
As the next exit approached, he didn’t let his father forget: He just started pressing “Here” until his father acknowledged it. It wasn’t hard to see the exits on this boring road. Normally Michael might have even enjoyed this ride, because even though the world was passing by way too quickly, the view had so very little to distract his brain.
But today, nothing felt right. And so he rocked and hummed the happy place song his mother had taught him and tried not to make any noises that might upset his father more.
3
When they got to the diner just off the exit, his father sat him in the booth. “Stay here and don’t cause problems. Figure out what you want to eat.” He pushed the laminated menu over to Michael, but Michael could see the grease stains and fingerprints, and didn’t want to touch it. Instead, he looked at it from a distance.
He knew what he’d want, anyway. He always at the same thing. Scrambled eggs. Pancakes. Milk. That was what he got when they went to a place like this. That was what he got from the three diners that his mother took him to in the town where they lived, and this place didn’t look the same but it smelled the same: Grease, bacon, coffee, toast. A little bit of cleaning solution. The server’s cheap perfume.
Same smells, so he would have the same food. His mother would have known that without asking.
But instead, his father pushed the menu a little closer to him and let out an impatient sigh, still standing over him. “Look, I have to hit the head. Just... stay here.”
Michael wanted very much to rock and punch the bench next to him, but that Danger Voice inside of him told him to control it for a little bit longer. So he watched his father leave, sitting as still as he could.
The server came over. Her nametag said Mabel. He didn’t look at her face, but he could tell from her body movement that she was nice. Her energy reminded him of his mother.
“Whatcha got there?” she asked, pointing at his communication board.
He pressed some buttons, then hit play. “You help. Bad man.”
Mabel’s body stiffened. “What did that say?”
Michael closed his eyes. Something was very, very wrong, and this could be his only chance to fix it. He pressed play again. “You help. Bad man.”
She looked in the direction of the bathroom, then crouched down next to Michael. The smell of her perfume, this close, made his stomach turn, but he persisted. A third time: “You help. Bad man.” And then, mustering all of this power, he looked over into Mabel’s eyes.
She put a cold hand on top of his, and he pulled it back, so she nodded and stood. “I gotcha,” she said sternly, and Michael now knew things would be better soon.
Colossians 4:6 (April 5)
“The thing is, I’ll never know if you really like my cooking.” I was standing over the stove, slowly stirring a pot of marinara sauce.
“I do. I’ve said I do.” Miranda was sitting on the counter next to me, swinging her legs forward and letting them hit the dishwasher lightly before swinging them again. I wasn’t fond of that noise, and I was concerned about the dishwasher getting dented, but I was trying to focus on the cooking.
“I know you have. But what I’m trying to explain to you is that I’ll never really know, you know?”
“Don't you trust me?”
I sighed. This was so hard to explain. I tried another tack: “Words mean things, sure, and words are used to communicate thoughts, but I can’t really know what you’re truly thinking, and you can’t really know what I’m truly thinking. Words can be misleading.”
I held the wooden spoon out to her. She tasted it, considered for a second, and said, “A little more oregano.”
I tasted it, then nodded. “Sure.” I wasn’t sure, though, and that was another thought for me to mull around in my head.
“See?” Miranda tipped her head a little bit towards the pot. “I gave you honest feedback. I didn’t just lie and say it was perfect.”
And objectively, that made sense. Objectively, it was difficult to argue with that. There are so many times I wish my brain would just settle down and let things be.
“I get it,” I said, but it felt like a lie. She was looking at my face; I was looking at the wall behind the stove.
She put her hand on my arm in a way that, for a moment, I felt like she understood. And maybe, just a little bit, she did.
Hebrews 13:2 (April 6)
“This is Jenny. She’s a little shy.”
Jenny was aware that her mother was talking, addressing another adult in this new school that she was apparently supposed to attend now.
Her family had moved across two states. In October. Apparently because her father had found his Dream Job, and so they’d had to move from Michigan to Minnesota in the middle of a school year.
Jenny remembered her parents discussing it. It had only been a month ago, and now her entire world had changed.
“But what about Jenny?” her mother asked. “She just started third grade. She’s finally starting to settle down.”
Jenny was in the other room, watching Bluey on her iPad. She was pretending not to listen to her parents, but it was impossible for her not to listen to every conversation happening around her. It made it so difficult for her to focus.
“Carol, you know this is a huge step for me. Double the salary! You wouldn’t even have to work anymore. And Jenny will make new friends. Kids are resilient at her age.”
“Most kids are,” her mother said. There was a soft sigh in her voice, the resignation that Jenny had gotten used to. “But Jenny’s different. You know that.”
“She’s a little shy, sure. But she’ll work it out. It took her longer here than other kids, but she worked it out.”
There had been more, of course. Quite a few arguments over that first week, and while it wasn’t fair that her parents had to put so much thought into how Jenny would react, it also wasn’t fair that Jenny didn’t get to decide where they lived or where she went to school or anything.
So here she was now, clinging to her mother’s skirt and peeking out at the class of complete strangers seated in ugly plastic chairs around ugly fake wood tables.
“Hello, Jenny.” The adult woman in a too-chipper flowery sun dress, her long brown hair in a ponytail that made her look almost too young to be a teacher, bent down, hands tucked between her knees, face nearly but not quite at Jenny’s level. She was smiling a plastic smile that went with the chairs and the tables.
Jenny leaned a bit farther behind her mother, then scanned the classroom again, assessing which children looked like potential threats and which might, possibly, potentially, be allies.
One in particular stuck out to her: A girl with red hair in a pixie cut, wearing a t-shirt that read “Princess Trouble!” in sparkly text. When Jenny made eye contact with her, the other girl smiled like the Cheshire cat in the Alice book at home.
Jenny jumped a little, stuck her thumb into her mouth, and curled her body over to her mother’s other side.
“Jenny,” the adult woman said. She rotated her torso to adjust for Jenny’s movements. “I’m very glad to meet you. You can call me Miss Heather.”
Jenny looked Miss Heather up and down, gently suckling her thumb, the fingers of her other hand clutching her mother’s skirt tighter. She could feel her heartbeat racing. Though she knew that she was being assessed by all of the other students right now, and the First Impression she was making wasn’t good (her father had briefed her, again, this morning on the importance of First Impressions), still, she didn’t feel in control of her reaction to this situation.
Miss Heather stood up again and went back to talking to her mother. “Does she talk?” she whispered.
“Yes, she’s just a little shy. Once she settles in, she’ll be fine.” Her mother looked down at her, and even though she didn’t look back, Jenny could tell from her voice that her mother wasn’t convinced.
“Well, there’s a chair open next to Beth,” Miss Heather said. “How about you sit there for now, Jenny?”
She motioned in the direction of Princess Trouble, whose eyelids flared in a carnivorous way, the smile getting just a little more sinister.
The direction of Miss Heather’s voice focused back on Jenny’s mother. “Beth is one of our classroom leaders. She’ll take good care of Jenny.”
That’s what Jenny was afraid of.
Romans 12:9 (April 7)
Okay, so, I was in fourth grade, so that was like… 1979? I think? I was in the special education room because I was prone to meltdowns in school, some really violent ones, throwing things, screaming, that sort of thing. They’d given me an EI IEP… that stands for Emotionally Impaired. These days I probably would have been identified as Autistic. Properly, you know? But in those days Autism was a much narrower, more extreme diagnosis than it is these days. Which sucks, because instead I was treated as a … psycho, should I say psycho? That sounds wrong, like a word I’m not supposed to say, but still, that’s how I was treated and that’s how I felt. The other kids called me a spaz, which is also a word I feel like I’m not supposed to say, but hey, it feels like it belongs to people like me, you know? At least it’s better than what the other kids in the special education room were called, that’s a word I know I’m not supposed to use. And I never do. But I did back then, because I didn’t know better and everyone used it and it was just the thing that people said. I’d’ve been ashamed of myself if I knew, but I didn’t. I didn’t go to the special ed room every day. It was just for when I was feeling overwhelmed. To calm down, to get away from the other kids, especially the ones who were teasing me. They did that a lot, because of my explosions. They’d tease me and wind me up until I exploded and then they’d stand around and laugh. The other kids in the special ed room, the ones with the cognitive impairments–that’s CI in teacherspeak–were there pretty much all the time. There weren’t a lot of them, though. The thing is, though, two of them were older, like, sixth grade but too old for sixth grade, a boy and a girl, and they sort of bullied me, too, but it was in a different way. They would sneak off and hide in a closet in the back of the room and do things they weren’t supposed to be doing, and then they’d make me watch out for the teacher so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Then later they’d act like we were friends, and I didn’t know what to do about that because I didn’t want to get in trouble and I really didn’t think I could be friends with them anyway because, well, you know, I was really arrogant. At the same time, they were willing to at least pretend to be my friends, so. And honestly, I don’t think I ever even learned their names, or if I did, I’ve long forgotten them.
Isaiah 58:7 (April 8)
“Hey everyone, Harry here at the tent city seeing if I can find someone who’s hungry.” The voice was coming from behind the view, as the camera view itself bounced along to the pace of the speaker’s walking. “I stopped at City Lights Deli and picked up a bag full of sandwiches. They didn’t want to be in the video, but here’s a shout out anyway.”
The walking stopped in front of a pop-up tent surrounded by signs of urban decay: Grass peeking in tufts through cracked asphalt, shards of broken bottles, spray painted marking of road repair that likely never happened, a dead rat curled into a pile of brown leaves.
“Hello, anyone in there?” Harry called out.
An apparently masculine head peaked out of the opening: Long hair, but a month or so’s beard growth.
They squinted up at the camera. “What?”
“I’m just trying to find someone willing to trade a sandwich for a story.”
The person emerged from the tent and knelt upright on the dirty asphalt. “What kind of story? And what kind of sandwich?”
“The story of how you got here. And corned beef, stacked high on rye bread.” A hand, presumably Harry’s, appeared at the bottom of the frame. “Let’s start with your name.”
“You can call me Jennifer.”
“Is that your name?”
“What’s a name? You can call me Jennifer.”
“So, okay. Jennifer. How did you get here?”
Jennifer opened the sandwich’s clamshell and sniffed at it suspiciously. “I walked.”
“No, I mean… how did you wind up homeless?”
She opened the sandwich and inspected the meat, then poked the pickle spear out onto the ground with a cracked fingernail. “What’s your name?” she asked, still staring at the meat.
“I’m Harry.” The hand appeared again, this time to give a thumb’s up to the audience.
“Well, Harry, when I was fourteen years old, I was the golden child. I was in a gifted program at school.” She pulled a slice of beef off the sandwich and dropped it into her mouth, and started chewing. “I was full of promise. But I had a different name then, and a different future.”
“So what happened?”
“I told my father I was a daughter, not a son. And that was that.” She ate another slice of beef, then counted the slices that were remaining. “How much more story do I owe you?”
“That’s terrible, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“No, you’re not. I’m just someone to monetize with corned beef sandwiches. How many views will I give you?”
Harry paused, then tried again: “So you were thrown out for being transgender?”
“Age fifteen. Autistic. Transgender. I lived in a teen shelter for a while, and then I got too old for that, too. Golden boy, garbage girl.” She continued to drop slices of meat into her mouth, chewing it slowly, staring challengingly at the camera. “Ten years since I was thrown out, and this is where I am now.”
“That really is terrible.” Harry did his best to sound sympathetic, but there was also a boredom rolling under his tone.
Jennifer flashed her eyebrows upward. “You probably want me to thank you for the sandwich, but that’s not going to happen.”
“Well, you’re welcome for it anyway.”
“Goodbye, Harry.”
And she disappeared back into the tent with the rest of her sandwich.
Deuteronomy 22:5 (April 9)
I stabbed my salad with my fork and thought about tuxedos.
It wasn’t the salad’s fault. It was exactly what I’d asked for: Romaine, not iceberg, with four tomato wedges and some radish slices, nothing else, no dressing.
This was different than everyone else’s salad, so of course I was being difficult. But I could see that everyone else’s salad was drenched in vinaigrette, and had those weird little carrot curls that just would not do.
I was upset about tuxedos. The wedding invitation had specifically instructed all men to wear them, and all women to wear solid-colored ball gowns, in a strong primary color.
I’d gotten past that part. And it wasn’t the cost of rental that bothered me: I have money. I’m comfortable in that regard.
It’s the smell of chemicals they use to clean them. It’s the feeling of stiffness in the shirt, the way the jacket hangs heavy on my shoulders, the way the shoes squeeze my feet. It’s the morose contrast of the black against the white.
But that wasn’t even why I was abusing my hapless bespoke salad.
I could have managed through these inequities, but my excitement of being able to attend an event of this complexity and novelty without having to worry about how I was dressed had been crushed by the realization, on arriving, that other people hadn’t.
There were men in black business suits. Not tuxedos. There were even a few men in navy or brown suits, and one man wearing Crocs. Crocs!
Crocs, to a formal wedding!
There were women in fancy dresses that most certainly were not ball gowns, and some in pastels. The woman next to the man in Crocs was wearing a sun dress and sandals.
So first off, why was I suffering in this penguin suit if other people didn’t have to? But that was even a mask for my true annoyance, which is that I felt like, once again, I had failed to follow directions.
I’d followed the literal directions, of course, but that’s not the game society plays. The game society plays is that you have to guess how far from the spoken rules you’re allowed to be and still not get thrown out.
And here I was, yet again, in physical misery as I tried to play entirely within the rules, knowing that people were secretly judging me for being ever so compliant to silly expectations.
It just wasn’t fair.
And so I stabbed my salad and thought, bitterly, about tuxedos.
2 Chronicles 2:14 (April 10)
A thing I like about finger painting is the feeling of the goo on my fingers.
Paint brushes feel too much like pencils, which remind me of how messy my handwriting is and how judgmental my teachers were about that. I never really liked to write anyway. Words constrain me, even paint brushes constrain me.
A thing I like about finger painting is that nobody really expects it to look like anything. It’s all about the emotions. Red means passion. Yellow means optimism. Green means joy. That’s how it feels to me, at least. And the colors can change their meanings depending on the strokes, or the other colors around them, or how thin or thick they are on the sheet.
With a paint brush, I feel like I’m supposed to draw something. With my fingers, I can just bond with the goo sploching and splurching against the paper.
A thing I like about finger painting is the way the paint clings to the paper, squeezing it up and warping it until the two merge into one thing: Not paper anymore, but paper with finger paint. Not paint anymore, but paint on paper.
That feels to me how I’m supposed to feel about graphite on paper. That’s what my creative writing therapist told me when I was young: That I would like writing better if I thought about how I was taking the thought out of my brain and bonding it to the paper with the pencil.
But the paper doesn’t really change. It remains flat, with only the slightest of etchings. Turn the paper over and you can hardly tell it’s been written on.
Not true with finger paintings. Stack the dried paintings together and they resist flatness. There is no mistaking a painted sheet for a blank one.
A thing I like about finger painting is the mess. As a left-handed person, pencil writing leaves its reminder on the edge of my hand, as I blur my print while I write over it. But that is a grayish silver scar, a reminder of how writing tries to bond with me but fails.
Finger paints are everywhere, though. With a brush, the goal is to avoid putting paint anywhere other than the canvas, but with fingers, nothing escapes. There is no point to wearing clean, fresh clothing; there is no point to worrying about clean, fresh hands. The chaos is the art. The art is chaos.
Chaos originally referred to the primordial time, before things became formed and everything had to become its own thing. Fingers in paint on paper lets me reconnect with that chaos. I can abandon the structures and strictures of modern civilization and touch the inner core of the universe.
And that’s the thing I like most about finger painting.
Proverbs 22:1 (April 11)
My parents named me Leroy because it means “The King” in French. This is funny because the most famous song about someone named Leroy is a Jim Croce song about a tough guy who is “meaner than a junkyard dog”. But there aren’t as many songs about men as there are about women. There’s “Gigantic” by Pixies, which is about someone named Paul, but there’s also “Hey Paula” by Paul and Paula. Three-syllable names are especially common: Eurythmics have at least three: “Belinda”, “Jennifer”, and “Julia”. I know four songs with “Valerie” in the title, by The Monkees, Steve Winwood, Quarterflash, and Material Issue. And they’re not all three syllables: There’s “Jolene” by Dolly Parton and at least two songs called “Victoria”. Billy Joel does list a bunch of men in “Piano Man”, so there’s that, and the only person named in a title on Elvis Costello’s compilation “Girls Girls Girls” is Oliver (three syllables still, but a man). There’s also “Mickey” by Toni Basil (plus “Ricky” by “Weird” Al). Elton John had early tracks with Daniel and Alice. But overall, there are seem to be more songs that name women than name men (and Billy Joel’s list is mirrored by the women listed in Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5”), although maybe part of my perception is because some of the songs about men, like Soft Cell’s “Martin” and Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”, are really dark, while songs naming women are often love songs.
Back to my original point, though: My parents really did want me to feel special when they called me Leroy, and they named my brothers Duke and Earl. I’m not sure what they would have named a girl; maybe Princess, I suppose. Lorraine? That’s not really from the French word for queen, but it sounds close. There’s Regina, which doesn’t have a famous song but does have a particularly obnoxious character in the movie “Mean Girls”, so I guess that’s not great either. There’s also Thea, which goes with Theo, both of which mean “God”, but my parents are to Christian to be naming their children that way.
So Leroy it was, and when I was in Kindergarten the Jim Croce song was all over the radio and so that’s all I heard for most of elementary school, kids and even teachers humming that as I walked in the room. I came to hate that song, and I guess I came to resent my name because of it, but by the time I got to high school it had stopped because the world had moved on from Jim Croce, who had tragically moved on from the world years earlier.
Psalms 150:3 (April 12)
By the time Toby’s sister found him, he was well deep in his meltdown.
He had tried to shut it down instead, he really had. He had felt it coming and had tried to push it back down. But his sister had left him feeling unmoored, and then the voice that she’d put in his head started mocking him, and it got to be too much.
Wait, you need more context. I’ll rewind.
Tomorrow’s Regret had been Toby’s favorite band for so long. There was something about the bassist’s work in particular, it felt like Toby’s heartbeat. So when he saw that they were coming to town, he begged his sister to take him.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You’ve never been to a concert before. Do you think you can handle one?” Before the words were completely done echoing between them, she already regretted them.
Okay, I feel like you might need even more context. I’ll rewind again.
Toby and Tabitha’s parents died in a car crash shortly after her 15th birthday. Toby was 12 at the time. They were sent to live with their maternal grandparents, who weren’t really equipped to deal with Toby’s needs. Neither was Tabitha, but at least she’d had most of a lifetime learning strategies.
The move was a trauma, of course: It meant a new school district, one that was less capable of helping students with special needs. New friends, and while Tabitha had kept in touch with her old friends on social media, a different state, an inability to interact daily in person, meant things faded away. Especially with Tabitha having to help navigate Toby through a brand new system that he just didn’t seem to work well within.
As Toby entered his teen years, at least he settled down. He was bonded to Tabitha, of course. Clung to her in ways that sometimes helped her feel needed in an otherwise indifferent world and sometimes felt smothering. And as she entered adulthood, she made decisions on her education and career that left her still capable of supporting her brother: More of that feeling of being both needed and smothered.
That’s why she winced internally when she asked him if he could handle the concert. She’d learned that asking him that about new experiences planted the seeds of disappointment: It gave his brain permission to sabotage the event.
But she’d said it, and the best way was to just let it linger without trying to pull it back.
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s Tomorrow’s Regret!” He waved his arms wildly and started singing one of their songs.
Tabitha watched him and sighed. She’d been to concerts, and the place the band was playing was dark and claustrophobic. She worried about what would happen when that dark claustrophobia contrasted with the bright light show, and she knew the volume would be way too high.
And so she relented. “But you need to bring headphones. Over the ears, Loops won’t be enough.”
That elicited a scowl. “I don’t want the band to see that I’m different. Especially not Marcus.”
“If his bass really speaks your heartbeat,” she said, “he’ll understand why you need the headphones.”
And so he agreed, but on the day of the concert, he couldn’t find them and it was time to go.
Tabitha suspected that it had been deliberate, that he’d hid them somewhere that she wouldn’t be able to find them so he could prove to her that he could handle the experience like everyone else handles experiences.
Toby hated being the way he was. Everyone around him, including his sister, navigated through the world so easily, and everything he tried to do was so fraught. Too loud. Too bright. Too much judgment.
The judgment was one of the worst parts. Toby was so acutely aware of everyone staring at him, judging him, questioning him, wondering what was wrong with him.
But he was so excited about Tomorrow’s Regret, so against Tabitha’s better judgment, she let him leave the house with just his Loops.
During the opening act, they hung out in the lobby, which reeked of weed, mildew-laden concrete, and aging plywood. He bought a shirt, making sure it was a light enough color that Marcus could sign it. Tabitha split her attention between her brother and the opening act, trying to decide whether they were worth exploring more later on Spotify.
Her ultimate decision: Not really. They weren’t even in the same genre of Tomorrow’s Regret. They were some retro goth act, the woman at the microphone crooning out like a Souixsie-wannabe, while Tomorrow’s Regret had far more pop sensibilities layered over those lyrics that appealed so deeply to the teen angst she was currently surrounded by.
Nineteen now, she realized that she was one of the oldest people in the building who weren’t parents glumly chaperoning their teen children. Then she realized she was, really, a parent glumly chaperoning a teen child.
By the time Toby had gotten through two songs, Tabitha figured he’d be okay. She figured she’d worried for no particular reason, and she let herself slide into the music. Tomorrow’s Regret was decent enough, and she’d caught herself humming some of their hooks when Toby wasn’t around to catch her. She probably would have liked them more if he didn’t play them so much.
And the third track was her favorite, “Get Lost With Me.” It was one of Toby’s least favorite, so she didn’t have to hear it often, but even the first time she’d heard it, she’d really connected with it. So, true to the title, she got lost with the music, her attention drifting away from Toby. He’d been enjoying himself, and they’d found a fairly low-traffic area where he could flap and spin to his heart’s content.
Or so she’d thought.
But then, as the song faded and the crowd started to applaud, Tabitha was snapped back into reality by screams behind her, down an access hallway.
That’s where she found Toby, curled up on the floor, screaming, rocking, hitting his head against the cinderblock wall. There was a security guard standing over him, moving in the direction of picking him up. Several concertgoers were sticking their heads around doorways, watching her brother’s meltdown with bemusement.
“Sir,” she called out, trotting with urgency down the short hall, “I’ve got it. He’s my brother.”
The guard looked at her suspiciously, but stopped moving towards Toby. “What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s really okay,” she said. “He’s Autistic. He just needs me and some time to calm down.”
She could read the guard’s thoughts: “You brought an Autistic kid to a concert?” And yet he said nothing as he stepped back, and she crouched down in front of her brother, whose screams had reduced to whimpers, but who kept hitting the back of his head.
“Toby, sweetie, it’s me now. I’m sorry.”
She pushed down her sigh. This was so unfair to her, but this was also so unfair to him, too.
And so they were there together for what seemed like hours but, by Tabitha’s count, only lasted a few tracks from the band. She sat there silently, her hand on his knee, letting the meltdown subside. She didn’t try to talk him through it because she knew the only thing that would calm him down was time and empathy.
The rocking got less violent. The moaning slid into hums. Eventually, he opened his eyes and looked at her.
His eyes said he was sorry for being like this, so she said, “I know, it’s okay. What do you want to do now?”
Before he could answer, though, the opening riff for “Laughing At It All” came through from the main stage, and all the angst disappeared from his face. “That’s my song! Tabitha, they’re playing it!”
He jumped back to his feet, and though his cheeks were wet with the remnants of tears, there was unfettered joy in his eyes.
He spun then, just the two of them in this hallway, the darkness contrasted against the lights flashing from the doorway, where the guard had retreated, staring at this kid who had just switched from misery to joy as if a light switch had been flipped.
But Toby didn’t notice, or if he noticed, he didn’t care, his hands stiff and angled out like airplane wings as he spun around and around and sang out the lyrics at the top of his voice.
Tabitha stayed kneeling on the cold concrete, quietly watching her brother, tears coming to her own eyes.
But Toby didn’t notice, or if he noticed, he didn’t care.
Later, they’d get Marcus’s signature in black Sharpie on the t-shirt, while Tabitha, proud sister-mother, feeling hope that this had been a positive step towards his independence.
Proverbs 16:24 (April 13)
“It’s important for us to be vigilant,” Mr. Honeycutt was saying, “against the cost modifications eroding market share.”
“Vigilant,” Peter replied.
“Yes.” Mr. Honeycutt gave him a sideways look and then turned back to the PowerPoint graph on the display screen.
“Vii-GIL-lant.” Peter ran his tongue over his lips, savoring the flavor of the word.
Becky, sitting next to him, bumped his elbow. “Not the time,” she whispered.
“But the word,” he said, his brain fully pulled out of the meeting now. “It’s just… have you ever tasted that word before?”
Becky sighed deeply, keeping her eyes trained on Mr. Honeycutt, who was looking decidedly annoyed right now. She knew how Peter could be, but the Vice President in Charge of Financial Operations didn’t know, and most likely didn’t care.
And of course now the other six people around the boardroom table were staring at the interruption, and the interrupter, as well.
“You can tell me all about it later,” Becky said as quietly as she could while still being heard. “It’s time to focus now.”
Something in Peter’s eyes flashed, as if he had suddenly realized where he was. “Right. Sorry. Later.” He smiled sheepishly at the people who were staring at him, and after a short pause, Mr. Honeycutt continued.
“As we can see from the quarter four earnings drop, MacKenzie-Fisher has managed to pull a portion of our base.”
“Portion. Por-SHUN. Vi-GIL-ant.” He struggled to say them quietly this time, but it was still disruptive.
Becky nudged Peter again. “Are you feeling okay?”
He leaned towards her while watching the others at the table, still speaking low. “Can’t you taste it, though? It’s so delicious. Por-SHUN. Vi-GIIIL-ant. A portion of our vigilance.” The words sounded drenched in sibilance when he said them. Such tasty sibilance!
Becky sat forward. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Honeycutt, but Peter was just remembering an important report deadline. Hence the distraction.”
“I was?” He looked confused.
“You were.” And then, back to Mr. Honeycutt: “If he could be excused, I’ll give him the relevant information later.”
“Relevance,” Peter said. “Reverence. Diligence.”
“Yes,” Mr. Honeycutt said. “I think that would be a good idea.”
Becky looked at Peter until he got her silent message. He smiled awkwardly at Mr. Honeycutt, then quietly stood and left.
A few minutes later, Becky got a message notification, and read it: “A diligent portion of relevant reverence.” Followed by several laugh emojis.
Becky sighed again, set the phone face down on the table in front of her, and went back to the meeting.
Joshua 1:9 (April 14)
“Jenny, come on, it’s time for school!” Jenny’s mother shouted up from the base of the stairs.
Jenny had been in her bedroom, but she came out into the hallway to respond. “I can’t! Muffin’s missing!”
Carol started to talk, then rolled her eyes and trotted up the stairs so she didn’t need to shout. “Sweetheart, you’ve been late for school three times this month already.”
“But Muffin…!”
“I know,” Carol said tiredly. “Where did you see her last?”
Jenny led her into the bedroom and pointed at the bed. “Sixteen, there are sixteen of them. Daisy, Jada, Summer, …”
“Okay, I get it. But no Muffin.”
Jenny nodded, biting her lip and waving her left hand in the way that suggested a meltdown was imminent.
“Where did you see her last?”
“I counted them last night! Daisy, Jada, Summer, …”
“And was Muffin there?”
Jenny closed her eyes and listed the names silently. “Yes,” she said after a minute. “Sitting between Daniel the Tiger and Hannah the Platypus.”
Jenny’s mother surveyed the bed, first counting off sixteen stuffed animals, then lifting each one, then the pillows. “Is she under the bed?”
Jenny looked at her mother with wide eyes, shaking her left hand rapidly now. There was no way she was looking under the bed. Her mother knew full well who lived under there.
“Okay, sweetheart, we’ll find Muffin. If she was in the bed last night, she’s in the bedroom somewhere.”
“Maybe she was eaten by the monster under the bed.”
Carol thought for a moment about starting down this conversational path, then closed her eyes, took a breath, and decided to start her search.
Getting on all fours, she looked into the dark abyss where the monsters definitely didn’t live, under Jenny’s bed. Some dust bunnies, a pair of shoes, and a notebook covered in reflective unicorn and fairy stickers, but no Muffin.
Having pulled the stray items out of the darkness, her mother stood up again. Next stop: The dresser.
Jenny stiffened up as her mother moved in that direction. Carol noticed the change, and now Jenny was shaking both of her hands rapidly.
Carol stopped and turned back to Jenny. “Is there someting you want to tell me?”
Jenny shook her head slowly, without breaking eye contact. There was deep anxiety in her eyes.
“Where’s Muffin?”
“I don’t know!” Jenny stomped a foot defiantly.
“Is she in the dresser?”
Jenny looked out the window, humming to soothe herself.
Carol nodded and opened the top drawer of the dresser. Muffin Puppy’s sideways smile greeted her.
She lifted Muffin and held her out to Jenny, crouching as she did so. “Babydoll, what’s going on?”
Jenny grabbed Muffin and squeezed it tight, turning away.
“Is there a problem at school?”
Jenny sat down on the ground, her back to her mother, and curled up around Muffin, humming a song her mother didn’t recognize.
“Okay,” Carol said. “No school today. But we need to work this out.”
Jenny nodded her head, and curled up into a tighter ball around Muffin.
Carol sat on the bed. She picked up Daisy Bear and started idly brushing her fur, waiting for Jenny to calm down enough to talk.
Romans 12:15 (April 15)
“My brother had long dreamed of being a police officer. In his mind, it was the perfect job: Enforcing the rules that society lives by, keeping people from doing wrong. He was consistently offended by the decay that he saw in the civil order. His writings were filled with despairing commentary on how people have just increasingly lived according to their own selfish desires, with little concern for others. He struggled to see empathy or kindness in the world, in part because of his stubborn, if flawed, personal sense of moral justice, and in part because of the way he was consistently treated, throughout his childhood.
“One tragic irony of Autism is that, while Autistic people are often accused of lacking empathy, we are so often the victims of a society that lacks empathy towards us. And while I could successfully navigate that irony in a way that made sense to me without destroying my faith in others, my brother could not.
“So for him the police were the last bastion of civilization, holding things together enough to avoid the final decay. This was the jaded reality in which my brother lived. And even though we knew, he knew, that his Autism impacted his abilities too much for him to be successful in law enforcement, still he dreamed.
“Still he dreamed.”
The speaker paused, inhaled, exhaled, stared fixedly at a spot on the floor in front of the lectern. Someone coughed. A pew creaked as someone shifted.
“I will never understand the depth of his cynicism against the world, not fully, but I will also never understand what it was that a sixteen year old having a meltdown could have done that justified his life being cut short by the very people he admired. Seventeen shots. I know it’s become a rallying cry, but for me and my family, it’s a cold statement of reality. A final commentary justifying his fear of the decay of empathy in the world.
“Seventeen shots.”
The speaker paused again, taking a lingering moment to look at the casket, tracing the shape of his brother’s face with his eyes.
And then, one last time, so quiet only a handful of people heard him: “Seventeen shots.”
For Victor Perez.
2 Corinthians 5:3 (April 16)
Alice looked at the reflection in the mirror.
She was dressed as her most famous namesake: A yellow dress with puffed sleeves covered by a white pinafore, tailored to match Tenniel’s first color illustrations.
When she said she was dressing as Alice in Wonderland for the Halloween party at work, Jasmine, her wife, had suggested a Sexy Alice, which (1) wouldn’t be appropriate for work and (2) wouldn’t be appropriate for Alice. Alice the person, that is, but also Alice in Wonderland.
When she’d told Dhani at work what her wife had said, Dhani said she should dress like American McGee Alice, complete with blood stains and a kitchen knife. Plastic if she must, stainless steel if she could. That would give Jasmine a clear message.
Then Benny had suggested a Hot Topic Alice, all black with leather and buckles, and goth makeup to match, but Dhani and Alice gave him a pair of annoyed looks which gave him the message, and he moved on.
For her, there was really only one Alice to be, the one from the original books. Not even the Disney version, with the yellow dress replaced with powder blue.
It was rare enough for her to be invited to Halloween parties as it was. It had been years; outside of her work, her friends circle pretty much consisted of Jasmine and her small set of close-knit friends, a group that had preceded Alice in Jasmine’s life, where she felt like an outsider, relegated to hanging out with the other spouses and significant others.
So it was important to her, going to the first Halloween party she’d been invited to on her own merits in as long as she could remember, even if it was just for work, that she show her authentic self. Not some commercial overlay, but the original Alice. As Tenniel and Carroll had intended her.
And looking at her reflection now, she marveled at the job she’d done. She was 36, but her reflection looked much younger. Her naturally blond hair was just straggly enough, held back by the cutely bowed headband. This was not the naïvely affable Alice of the Disney incarnation; like herself, this Alice was just annoyed enough with the world to have a scowl.
Alice stretched out a hand to her reflection, and wondered if the glass would part for her fingertips. Had she actually become the Alice of Wonderland? Who was the real Alice, anyway?
She stood there, her arm frozen in space, fingertips just an inch away from the glass, and her soul slid far away, until it was floating in the air above the house, looking down at the original Alice, her namesake, on the verge of embarking on a voyage through the looking-glass.
Time slipped into a stream, a river of tears filling up the bedroom, time being a swirl, a labyrinth, for Alice (whichever Alice it was) to ride through a filigree reality on.
Had it been five seconds? Five minutes? An hour? Time was meaningless, as Alice connected across 160 years to her original self.
And then:
Alice slowly blinked up at Jasmine, her head in Jasmine’s lap, her body curled into an angled ess across the bed, a cool compress on her forehead.
Jasmine, for her part, was dressed like her own Disney Princess namesake, sexier than Alice would have preferred for a work event, but she’d already lost that discussion.
“Are you back?” Jasmine asked.
“Yes, I’m sorry, I’m back.”
Jasmine smiled softly. “Good. I’m glad. But are you going to be okay for the party?”
Alice sat up, letting the wet washcloth fall to the floor. “I’m fine. It was just a momentary thing.”
Jasmine smirked. “It’s been ten minutes since I found you, and how long it was before that, I don’t know.”
“Fine. But I’m okay now.”
Jasmine give her a long, suspicious look. “Okay, if you say so. But I’m driving.”
Alice smiled tightly. “Yes, you certainly are.”
Matthew 5:4 (April 17)
“Hey, hi. How are you doing today?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
Jacqui scrunched up her eyebrows, looking confused. “I’m good. But I heard about your aunt.”
“Yeah. Aunt Keiko.” A motion caught my attention in my peripheral vision, so I turned my head and looked out the window. A cardinal had landed on a tree branch. It looked at me a moment, then flew off again. I sighed. “But I’m fine. Really.”
She put a hand on mine, which I looked down at with a frown. “You can talk to me if you need to.”
The thing is, though, I didn’t know what I needed. But definitely not a hand on mine, definitely not a nostalgic talk about my feelings.
“It’s okay. Thank you.” I put my hands in my skirt pockets, thanking the Fates that this skirt had them.
“Well, I’ll be praying for you, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”
And this is why I hadn’t wanted HR to send out an email. Yes, I would be taking a day off for the funeral. HR needed to know that, but I’d specifically asked them not to send out the standard company-wide “someone is grieving, go annoy them” email, and they had anyway.
Jacqui moved on, so I went back to work, my cubicle feeling like a conspicuous cage for the well-meaning vultures to descend upon.
I really don’t know how to cry. I can’t mourn the way the Normies want me to mourn. I just wanted to do my work and get distracted in the mundane grind.
I was halfway through typing a sentence in my report, having spent far too long getting it composed in my head, when I heard a voice over my shoulder.
“Oh my God, I just read the email.” It was Bob from Accounting. “I’m so sorry. How are you doing?”
Just. Let. Me. Work.
Isaiah 66:13 (April 18)
Mabel hadn’t been expecting an Amazon package, but one was leaning against her apartment door.
She’d been on her way to the grocery store. It was Tuesday morning, and her shift at the diner started at 4 on Tuesdays. Tuesday and Thursday, just the dinner rush. Mondays off, thank goodness, because the other four days she worked ten to nine, long days on her feet.
Which meant Mondays were for resting. Catching up with the housework. No shopping, though.
Now that Daniel was old enough, at least he could help out with that stuff when he wasn’t at school. Which, of course, he usually was on Mondays. He was usually out before Mabel had even woken up.
When Daniel had first been diagnosed, age six, Mabel had worried about how things would turn out. She’d been trained by society to hear “Autism Spectrum Disorder” as a curse. Would he ever hold down a job, would he ever be able to have normal relationships? Or would he require lifelong care, and with his father out of the picture and Mabel not having many career prospects, the future looked bleak.
At least at that point, she had had health insurance, having been a secretary at the corporate sales office of Winker and McGee, the Midwest’s largest manufacturer of supply chain extrusion equipment. Or something like that. Mabel had honestly never really been clear. She just typed letters and answered phone calls.
So: Bad news, Winker and McGee had closed down when Daniel was ten. Good news, Daniel’s Autism didn’t need the level of supports that Mabel had been trained to believe where necessary. He managed fairly well at school, despite the school’s best efforts to undermine him. He was the same sort of “weird kid” his mother had been in her day, but unlike her, he had a few friends, mostly other “weird kids”.
Now that he was in high school, he could normally manage to pack his lunch on his own, to get to the bus on his own, and to get home on his own. He was even on the school’s junior varsity baseball team, even though he spent a lot of time on the bench. Summers, he worked at the Ice Cream Castle.
Lou, the manager of the diner, was also understanding. He didn’t really know the details, he just knew that Mabel’s kid was disabled and that she sometimes needed to leave work to take care of emergencies. The diner’s glory days were in the past anyway, along with the rest of the town, and there were two other servers.
But she didn’t have a lot of money beyond the basics, so a package from Amazon generally meant a gift from her sister.
Mabel brought the package back into the living room and sat down on the couch to open it. Sure enough, there was a gift card note inside: Mabel: It’s April, so I thought you’d love this! Colleen.
She saw the blue of the shirt and winced. She didn’t like where this was going, but Colleen really did mean well.
She unfolded the t-shirt, which had a big heart filled with puzzle pieces and the text “Autism Mom! I speak because my son can’t!”
“Daniel can speak just fine,” Mabel said, rolling her eyes as she pushed the shirt back into the envelope. As she did so, she noticed that it was two sizes too large.
Colleen really did mean well, she tried to remind herself, but the second time felt less convincing.
1 Samuel 22:1 (April 19)
Ginger could hear them talking on the other side of the door.
“Hi, honey, I’m home.” That was Dad. He was coming in from work, which meant it was about half past five. He shut the front door behind him.
“Oh hi.” That was Mom. She was standing in the opening that separated the kitchen from the living room. “You’re home a little early.”
“Yeah, I got my report done, and I figured I’d sneak out before I got dragged into the Haberman project. That thing is falling apart.”
His voice was loud now, immediately on the other side of the door. Ginger curled up deeper into the darkness and held her breath.
The door handle rattled, then stopped.
“Put your coat on the chair,” Mom said. Ginger could tell she was completely in the living room now. “You can hang it up later.”
“Ginger’s still in there?”
“She had a rough day at school. There was bullying involved. It’s all right, the kids have gotten suspensions, but Ginger needed longer to decompress.”
Dad sighed heavily enough that Ginger could hear it through the door. “I don’t think we should keep humoring her like this.”
“Doctor Hampton said it’s fine. Let her be, she’ll grow out of it. You know that.”
Ginger adjusted herself in the darkness, and pressed herself harder against the back wall of the closet.
She knew that Mom didn’t really understand, but at least she accepted. That was more than Dad could do. It’s just that the outside world could get so loud sometimes, so bright, so much of everything, and this closet was the only space that Ginger had found at home where all that noise quieted down. No light except the crack under the door. The chaos of her siblings was muted by the walls. It was cool, not cold, and it was just the right amount of room for her to curl up on the floor, like she was now, and let all the screaming inside her brain drip out through her fingertips.
Nearly every school day, she’d have to sit in here for a little while. Most days, though, it was only a little bit of time.
Today, though, was rough. Those other girls had been so cruel. It wasn’t Ginger’s fault she was weird like this. Why couldn’t she just be herself?
That’s the thing that her teachers had said so many times in elementary school: Be yourself, and people will like you for you.
That doesn’t work when who you are is a weirdo. And now that she was in middle school, she was learning how cruel other people could be to weirdos.
And now, she felt trapped. The anxiety that had been subsiding was rising up again, with her father just inches away from violating her sanction, and now she’d have to face him at some point. He’d have that look on his face, that look of disappointment. Why couldn’t she be like her sisters? Heather was so well-adjusted in high school. She had friends. She had sports. She got good grades without working hard.
Why couldn’t Ginger be like Heather?
Even Margrette, in fourth grade, was doing fine, especially now that Ginger wasn’t in the school anymore to cause Margrette’s friends to wonder.
Why couldn’t Ginger be like Margrette?
On the other side of the door, Mom had convinced Dad, through words and apparently through gestures, to just let it go this time. He had disappeared into his den, and she back into the kitchen, and quiet descended again on Ginger in her closet.
She put her hands, palms flat, on the floor and let the new anxiety slip out of her fingertips, joining the silent screams that she’d already released.
It would be okay, eventually. But right now, it still wasn’t.
Psalms 90:14 (April 20)
It was dawn, and the smell of last night’s campfire still hung in the air.
Daphne knew that smell well: It would permeate her clothes, her tent, even her car for the next few weeks, after she’d gone back home. Back to the daily mundanities of life: rush around, be responsible, interact with people she only knew at surface level. Hi, how are you, how’s the weather?
But for now, it was her and the campsite. Nobody to interrupt her moments of solitude. No humming electric lights, no speeding cars driving by too closely, no teenagers walking by with their cell phones blaring chaotic music.
Just her and the campsite. So much quiet.
She had found this alcove in the forest, a clearing that had probably been made by other humans looking for the same escape she had been: Just on the side of the lake, with a view of yet more forest everywhere she looked across the water.
The only evidence of other humans still existing were the electric lines that competed with the trees off to the east, and the occasional hum of an airplane overhead.
Otherwise, she was blissfully alone. Alone to be with herself, her thoughts, her own questions about herself, deep questions about who she was and how she fit into the world. Without the noise of the outside world bearing down so constantly upon her, she was free to talk to the most important person in her world.
So here she was, in the dawn, drinking bourbon out of a metal cup because there was nobody here to judge her for hating coffee. The bourbon warmed her just as well, although the August morning chill was slight and only temporary.
Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. A chipmunk skittered past her in a nearby tree. She pressed her free hand into the dirt and felt the connection to the earth.
Once, only a few centuries ago, most of the world was like this. But now human encroachment had paved so much of it away.
She closed her eyes and reminded herself to stop thinking about the outside world. What mattered was the now.
Be present in the now.
Her cup empty, she set it down and stood up, feeling the morning sun’s heat on her face, contrasting with the coolness of the dirt under her bare feet.
Doffing her t-shirt and panties, the only things she’d worn to sleep, she walked up to the water’s edge, one foot in the water, one foot on land, her body feeling the cool morning breeze around her.
She closed her eyes and stood there, holding tightly onto that one specific moment, being as present in it as she could. Not fighting the thoughts of the world outside, but meeting them and discarding them as they came.
Be present in the now. Be present with yourself, and nobody else.
There was no plot; there was no story; there was only herself, stripped naked to the world, stripped naked to herself, in this moment.
She stepped forward into the water, where she bathed and baptized herself under the rising sun.
Matthew 18:10 (April 21)
“I think you’re having trouble understanding why we’re here, Mrs. Davis.” Mr. Haberman, the Assistant Principal, sat up in his chair, doing his best to take up as much presence as possible.
Carol crossed her legs and adjusted her skirt, doing her best to suppress the storm that was seething inside. “I understand enough. I understand my daughter is being blamed for being bullied.”
The other person in the room was Heather Green, Jenny’s teacher, who was doing her best to remain silent and smile brightly. That perky fake-smile was not helping Carol’s mood. Not at all.
“She destroyed another student’s art project, Mrs. Davis. In yet another of her temper tantrums. They’re getting out of control.”
Carol looked out through the window into the main office where Jenny was sitting, her face wet with tears, her thumb firmly in her mouth, Muffin being held in a stranglehold.
When she spoke, her voice was terse and rigid. “First of all, they’re not tantrums, they’re meltdowns. We talked about this when I first enrolled her. Yes, she lashes out. When she’s feeling overwhelmed. When she’s feeling bullied.”
“I assure you, Mrs. Davis, we don’t permit bullying at our school. Miss Green would certainly have interceded.”
“Beth is a monster.” Each word rolled out of Carol’s mouth and slithered around in the air before resting on the table in front of Mr. Haberman.
The Assistant Principal looked at Heather, who licked her lips thoughtfully and looked out the window. Her fake smile waned just a little.
He tried again: “Some of our students are more energetic than others, but that doesn’t excuse your daughter’s…”
“Jenny is responsible for her actions, but the adults around her are responsible for not putting her in situations where she’s likely to become overwhelmed. She doesn’t even want to come to school anymore, because of the way that bully has been abusing her.”
“I’m sure Miss Green can move her seat, but that still doesn’t address….”
“Miss Green should have moved her seat after the first incident. Is there another teacher Jenny could be moved to?”
“Again, you’re missing the point, Mrs. Davis. Your child destroyed another child’s artwork. Tore it to shreds. We can’t just look the other way for something like that.”
Carol clenched her fists and looked back out at Jenny. Inhale, exhale, Mama Bear. Inhale, exhale. “So what do you suggest?”
“Have you had her evaluated because of her outbursts?”
Carol’s eyes flared. “Have you not read her file? Is she not getting her proper services? And, again, we talked about this when I first enrolled her. Do you not remember?”
Mr. Haberman stammered and looked helplessly at Heather, whose smile had devolved into a smirk. “Of course, Mrs. Davis, of course. We’ll review all of that, we’ll make sure she’s getting that support.”
“Let me say this clearly: They’re meltdowns. She’s Autistic. She needs help managing them, and that includes not sitting next to a cruel self-entitled monster. Are you not aware of how Beth treats other children?”
“Mrs. Davis, I’d prefer if you didn’t talk about other children like that.”
But at this point Carol had already stood up and was done listening. “Move Jenny. To the other side of the classroom, if not to another classroom entirely. And for the love of God, get her her proper services. As soon as possible.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Mr. Haberman had shrunk down into his chair.
Carol walked out of the room, picking her daughter up and carrying her on her hip out of the school.
John 14:27 (April 22)
I love my sister, but I hate how she treats me like a child. I’m 18 years old today, and I wanted to go to C. J. Barrymore’s with my friends, but Tabitha insisted that it’s too loud and too crowded and that I’d melt down for sure.
I mean, I get it, I guess. She thinks she’s just watching for me, okay. I tend to get overwhelmed in situations like that, okay. And with Peter and Sammy there, too, that’s like triple the stimming, triple the weirdness, triple the fun.
I get why my sister would be nervous about that. She’s had to take care of me, mostly, since our parents died. And that’s a strain the way I am. If I didn’t know that I was a burden already, my case worker at school reminds me of it all the time.
Not in those words, of course. Ms. Harriet doesn’t literally say, “You’re a burden to everyone, you know.” She says it in that cloyingly sweet language that adults use with elementary schoolchildren: “You’re a special challenge, Toby. Your brightness can be blinding sometimes.”
Except I’m not in elementary school. I’m 18 years old! I know it can be hard to remember because sometimes I act younger and people tell me I look younger and it’s hard for me to understand why adults have to make things so complicated.
(And now that I’m an adult, I promise not to make things so complicated for Peter and Sammy. They’re younger than me. I met them in the afterschool program my case worker suggested I go to. They’re cool, and Sammy’s pretty and I want to ask her on a date one day but she’s 16 and I’m 18 now, so I’ll have to wait a little while, I think.)
And look, I know that C. J. Barrymore’s is loud and bright and crowded, full of chaos that can be a challenge for me, but I have my headphones and I have my sunglasses and most importantly I have Peter and Sammy and my sister Tabitha, and also most importantly when do I get to start getting treated like an adult instead of like a child?
It’s so frustrating. I want to scream, but that would just tell Tabitha she’s right and I’m wrong. And I don’t want that.
Exodus 22:21 (April 23)
“That’s a hate symbol, you know.”
The voice came at me like a spear, interrupting my reverie as I considered the selection of apples at the grocery store.
(Caleb loves the word “grocery”. He’ll roll it around in his mouth for hours if he’s in the mood, saying it different ways, emphasizing different parts, until he’s squeezed every ounce of juice out of it.)
“Excuse me?” I turned to the voice. A twenty-something, by the looks of it. A woman, I suppose, like me, but with this younger generation, I’ve learned to keep my suppositions to myself.
“On that child’s shirt. The jigsaw puzzle piece. Hate crime.”
She, they, were referring to the image on Caleb’s shirt. He was standing next to me, pushing his own miniature cart, even though by his age he towered over it. It was still his thing to do, and Trader Joe still let him do it.
He was wearing a dark blue shirt with a large puzzle piece and the words “April is Autism Awesomeness Month!” in a banner scroll across it.
(Caleb loves the word “Awesomeness”. When I read the shirt to him, he picked that word apart, dwelling on the sibilants and the vowel sounds. He can’t read by himself, and has trouble speaking, but he falls in love with individual words and embraces them like long-lost siblings.)
“Okay,” I said flatly, returning to my apples and hoping the person would go away. I really wasn’t in the mood for this today.
“You’re abusing your child.”
I squeezed the apple in my hand enough that my nails cut the skin. Great, now I’d have to buy it. “You don’t know my child. Please leave us alone.”
Caleb, for his part, was watching the fluorescent lights overhead, his jaw somewhat slack, as it often was when he was overthinking something in the environment. His headphones were over his ears, but they usually weren’t playing anything, and I sensed he could hear what was being said but I hoped he was enough in his own world that he wasn’t processing it.
“I’m Autistic,” she/they announced. “I know what I’m talking about.”
I looked her/them dead in the eye. “Please stop. I didn’t come here to be harassed.”
By this point, we’d gotten the attention of a TJ worker whose nametag announced “Josie”.
“Hi,” Josie said, situating herself between the two of us. “Is there anything I can help with?”
The other person scowled, cheeks flushed, but mumbled, “No, I’m fine.” and huffed off.
Josie smiled with a fake perkiness. “Enjoy your day, then,” she said, and left me with my apples.
1 John 2:16 (April 24)
The thing is, I don’t think Jared even likes me, let alone loves me, and I haven’t really let him know how I feel, because, well, it’s so hard to explain. I’ve been in love before. I’ve had boyfriends before, and one time for a strange and wonderful six months, I had a girlfriend before I decided that wasn’t the way I was, you know? And the love stuff in general just doesn’t seem to work out for me, but at the same time, I get these infatuations. They’re sometimes for some terrible people, and if I’m honest, I think Jared might be a terrible person, too. At least, it’s fair to say that he’s setting off a lot of red flags. He smokes. He’s been married, what, three times? The way he talks about women is disgusting, like we’re all below him. At the same time, though, I just can’t stop thinking about him. About what it would be like to be with him. Romantically, and also, just like, friends? Not because he’s a good person, because he’s not, but because he’s so interesting. He’s so different from the people I usually interact with. I work in an office, you know. Boring stuff. Even if my co-workers have interesting things going on in their lives, they don’t share them with each other. Or at least, not with me. I don’t like to interact with them, and the feeling is mutual, I guess. But Jared, he works in the gift shop on the first floor, and he takes cigarette breaks out behind the building. Who even smokes anymore? I know some of my co-workers vape, but there’s the thing about having a cloud of cigarette smoke hanging around you. People who vape, that’s done as soon as it’s done, but smokers carry their habit with them everywhere they go, and that’s where Jared’s at. He has the stained teeth and the mild cough that goes with it. I hate the smell, and that’s part of what I keep thinking about and how I know it would never work, but my brain still keeps going back to wanting to just get to know more about him, and I just can’t seem to let that go. I feel like it sounds like obsession when I’m sitting here telling you about it, but it’s different than that. I want to study him. I want to know how it is he still exists in this world that has moved past him and his mullet and his AC/DC t-shirt and how he’s just frozen in 1970 even though he doesn’t even look old enough to have lived through it. I mean, that’s really it, I’ve decided: I don’t like him. At all. But I want to explore him, like a museum exhibit. And if I told him that, what would he do? I feel like he’d let me, until he got whatever he thought he could from me, and then he’d just sever me and I’d have to find a new place to buy snacks. So I’ll just watch him from afar and let my brain keep deconstructing him, knowing that whatever I have built inside my mind is just a poor replica of who he really is.
Exodus 24:10 (April 25)
“Hey, what do you have there?” Aunt Dahlia sat down at the table next to Vanessa, who had drawn a picture of some flowers and was in the process of coloring the sky a light purple.
Vanessa’s my daughter, by the way. She’s eight, and she had been sitting quietly on a table out of the way during the family picnic.
I was sitting at a distance, close enough to watch and listen but far enough to give her some space. She was in one of her moods and I had been trying to let her refocus, but my sister had other ideas.
Vanessa turned her shoulder to her aunt and picked up a red crayon, laying its wax on top of the purple.
“Oh, that’s a pretty color, but is that the right color for the sky?” Dahlia picked up a blue crayon and proferred it to Vanessa.
My daughter gave her a sideways look, then gave me a more direct one. Okay, that was my cue to intercede.
I stood up and approached the table. “I think Vanessa wants to be alone right now.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful. Her colors are all messed up. And such a lovely drawing, too.”
Vanessa crumpled up the paper and dropped it to the ground, then stared glumly at the table. I was partly glad that she was redirecting an obvious meltdown into a shutdown, but I’m not sure I would have minded her giving her aunt a piece of her mind.
“Sis, I appreciate the thought, but she really needs to be alone right now.”
Dahlia put the crayon back down. “I don’t know why you pamper her like this. She needs to learn how the world works.”
Oh, she knows perfectly well how the world works. But I kept that thought to myself. “So you’ve told me. And yet, she’s my child, and I’m raising her how I think is best.”
Dahlia looked at Vanessa and started to speak, but I put my hand on hers and gripped just firmly enough to let her know, sister to sister, that this conversation was done for now.
She sighed, gave me another look, and then stood up. “I should really check on the other children.”
After she was gone, I put a fresh piece of paper down in front of Vanessa, but she pushed it aside and continued staring at the table.
“Okay, sweetie. I’m sorry she upset you, and the paper’s there when you want it.”
I went back to the other table, and a few minutes later, my daughter went back to coloring.
1 Timothy 4:14 (April 26)
Ravyn stared at the white paper which was pressed against the platen roller by the bail bar.
They’d gotten a manual typewriter because it felt like the way to be least distracted when writing, but even still, the white paper continued to stare back at them.
On the computer, every key press could instantly be erased, and so Ravyn found themself constantly thinking and rethinking, editing, re-editing, deleting entire sections, then grinding to a halt because the next word had to be absolutely perfect or it wasn’t worth it.
Surely, they’d thought: A manual typewriter would force the issue. Erasing text on a manual typewriter was no easy task; the typebar impressed the ribbon’s ink onto the paper with intimidating force, and even with correction ink, there was still the trace of the embossed letter. Mistakes would become part of the process, and they would linger there, reminders that perfection was elusive and need not be the immediate goal.
Instead, though, the permanence of it all preyed on Ravyn even more than before: Now, perfection had to be attained before a single key was struck, lest… what? That’s what they couldn’t answer for themself: What was the harm in fallability? Certainly the text on the page could be changed in future drafts.
But they knew: Edited away or not, the text, once created, would exist in its imperfection, and that fear ate away at them. No longer were they dealing with the utter impermanence of pixels on a screen: Now they were dealing with a gleaming sheet of white paper waiting to be embossed with their wisdom, and once written, once embossed, it would always exist as such.
Five times while thinking about this, Ravyn had set their fingers upon the keyboard, and five times, having massaged the key caps impotently, they’d pulled their hands back again.
And still the paper gleamed in its textual virginity.
Ravyn sighed, then pressed the detent release lever, rolling the paper off of the platen. They put it back on the pile of paper next to their typewriter.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.
Matthew 4:1 (April 27)
3:04.
I know what time it was because I instinctively looked at the clock on Letitia’s dresser moments after I opened her bedroom door and noticed she wasn’t there. The window was open, and while the rest of her stuffed animals were lined up on the edge of the bed, in size order, Theodore Bear was gone.
Sometime earlier, I had heard her talking to Theodore quite emotionally, a fictional conversation in which he was very upset about something and she was committing to make things right. I tried my best to keep up with the conversation, through her closed door, through the mist of my household chores, but somehow I got distracted. Between changing loads in the wash and picking up toys in the living room–toys her brother left around, because she never would have been this chaotic–I’d lost track of the conversation, and then lost track that she was having one at all.
And then I noticed the silence. Heart in my stomach, I raced to her bedroom door, trying to convince myself that I was being paranoid but feeling the rising panic anyway.
At 3:04, I confirmed the worst: She was gone. Theodore was gone.
Her window opened onto a lean-to which led to the ground. This should have been Deonte’s room, specifically for this reason, but when the three of us had moved in, she had been adamant: This was her room. The color of the paint, a gentle lavender, was perfect for her. The wood flooring creaked just right. There was a closet that was big enough for her to sit inside. There were no trees outside to block her view of the morning sun. Other than the window leading to the lean-to leading to the ground, it really was perfect.
And I’d thought about rigging the window somehow, such as putting something in the frame so it would only open enough to let the fresh air in, not enough to let Letitia out, but foolish me, I’d never gotten around to it. After Jasmine had kicked me, us, me out and told me, us, me to find a new place to live, I just wasn’t thinking clearly.
It was Saturday. They were supposed to be with their Mom on Saturdays, but when Jasmine had come to pick them up, Letitia had been too preoccupied with Theodore to want to go, and when Jasmine had pushed the issue–with me suggesting a milder tack, which led to yet another argument about why our daughter is the way she is and how it’s all my fault for pampering her and and and–well, that turned into a meltdown and Letitia hiding in her closet and refusing to come out, screeching as loud as a human being can screech each time we opened the door.
So Mom and Deonte had left. That was last night, and Jasmine had failed to call today. Custody decrees aside, I think Jasmine was fine with that. She doesn’t understand her daughter. I don’t either, to be honest. This has been a challenge for both of us, but especially for her.
Somewhere in the midst of all this thinking, I had made my way through the open window. Standing on the lean-to, I looked around the neighborhood, looking for any clues. My first instinct was to go down, to track my way through the backyard, into the patch of woods to the north of the house, where she had been very clearly directed to never go.
Instead, though, I instead went up, towards the roof. Perhaps I was hoping that this would be easy, that she’d just be sitting there looking at the clouds or something. Perhaps I was hoping that the higher vantage would give me clues. Perhaps I just didn’t know what to do.
This wasn’t the first time she’d wandered off, after all. So I was still berating myself about not jimmying some way to keep the window from opening all the way.
She wasn’t on the roof, and I didn’t see any trace of her down below, with my higher vantage. The stand of trees did what trees do: Stood there, making motion consistent with the slight breeze. The leaves were thick enough that I couldn’t see inside. I could see the plastic playhouse in the backyard, its roof long gone missing, and she wasn’t in there. And now I was standing precariously on a slope twenty feet in the air, trying to suppress my panic because I needed to focus on my balance lest I slip and fall and wind up immobile-or-worse on the concrete driveway below.
I looked at my watch. 3:07. I had no idea why it was important to mark the passage of time, except perhaps to keep me moored to reality, just as I had no idea why it would be useful to call her name, standing there on the aging shingles beneath my feet, realizing–and then chastisting myself for realizing–that we’d need a new roof soon because this one was showing definiite signs of aging.
I made my way back to the lean-to, then to the ground, looking at the grass to see if there were any signs of where she might have gone. As if I were a detective and there might be footprints in the bare patches, but of course there was a chaos of footprints in the bare patches, hers and Deonte’s and Deonte’s friends’ (because Letitia didn’t have any friends that would be willing to visit her at home). But I needed something tangible to do, something that might convince me that I wasn’t a neglectful father who can’t even keep proper track of an eleven year old girl.
My emotions told me to sit on the ground and cry. My objective brain told me I had to do something, but what? Call Jasmine and have her yell at me, and then she could use this later to reopen the custody agreement, although honestly she really didn’t want anything to do with the daughter she was still using the r-word about? Call the police and then that was a potential mess on multiple levels: CPS might get involved, if we even made it past the potential nightmare of the police confronting a Black child, even as young as she was, in the middle of a meltdown?
My emotions reminded me of their option: Sit on the ground and cry. It sounded really, really tempting at this moment in time.
3:09. The watch was reminding me that, even though it felt like it had been hours since I’d opened her bedroom door, it had only been five minutes. And how long before that had I heard her talking to Theodore? It couldn’t have been long. Maybe a total of twenty minutes. She had to be less than a mile away.
Assuming nobody had found a little girl wandering the streets and decided to kidnap her into a life of….
No, I would give no quarter to that voice right now. That was far too dark.
I made my way to the stand of trees, calling her voice while acknowledging that she wouldn’t respond anyway. And now I did see clear footprints, her shoes, walking in a specific direction. The darkness in my heart lifted a little. I could see a glimmer of hope: I was at least headed the right way.
And then, they stopped. Rather, they went up to a tree in the middle of the stand, and stopped.
I looked up the tree. Ten feet up, at a joint where a limb crooked outward, I saw her. My daughter. My lovely lovely angel. Just sitting there, talking quietly to Theodore.
“Honeybear!” I called up to her, one anxiety being replaced by another: This wasn’t a safe place for her, what if she fell? Still, I kept my voice loving and sweet, hiding the more negative emotions competing for attention inside my head. “Please come down.”
Instead, she kept talking to Theodore in low tones that I couldn’t hear, the two of them carrying on a secret conversation that, for now at least, I wasn’t privy to.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said. I wondered if I’d be able to pull her down against her will: She wasn’t that high, but high enough that a misjudgment may well hurt her. I really didn’t want to risk it.
And still, the conversation continued. She couldn’t have not heard me, and so I was left to assume that she was deliberately ignoring me.
“Honeybear peacock,” I said, my voice wavering just enough to show an anger I didn’t want her to hear, “I need you to come down. That’s not safe up there.”
“Bears love the trees,” she said flatly. “And we are bears.”
She held Theodore so he could look down at me, disapprovingly.
I pressed my forehead against the tree, reminding myself to remain calm. “Okay, honeybear, you can stay there for now, but be careful, okay?”
I sat down, my back supported by the tree, and looked at the trees around me. A spider crawled across my hand, and I let it, even though I had the urge to crush it. I was afraid of where I would go if I allowed myself even that little level of violence.
“Bears are careful in trees,” she said. “And we are bears.”
We sat in silence for a while, and when I checked my watch it said it was only 3:15. Eleven minutes of my life that could have changed everything, that could still change everything, if she continued to refuse to come out of the tree.
“Theodore misses his mommy,” she said, more quietly than her earlier announcements but still intended for me to hear.
“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to her?”
“She left him because she doesn’t love him anymore.”
I bit the inside of my lip to keep my voice steady. I didn’t know what to say: I worried that anything that I might say would turn this into the meltdown it was lingering around, and I worried that that would lead to a fall. So at first I said nothing, letting the silence itself commit the violence of pushing the wedge even further between mother and daughter.
“Bears can be complicated,” I said at last.
“Why, though? Why can’t bears be simple? It’s not Theodore’s fault that he’s the way he is. His family should love him anyway.”
I sighed, searching again for words and realizing I just didn’t have any that fit. “Please come down, Honeybear. I just don’t want you to fall.”
“I don’t know how,” she said. I looked up again, and this time she was looking at me directly, her face wet with tears. “I’m eleven.”
Eleven. Too young for any of this. I couldn’t understand why humans had to make things so complicated, and I was much older than that.
I stood up and held up my arms, my fingertips just shy of where she was. She slid into my arms, clutching Theodore tightly by his wrist.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she said. “Please don’t be mad.”
I held her tight, until she pushed against me and slid down to the ground. We walked back to the house together, side by side but not touching, her looking around at everything but me and me watching her the entire time.
Philippians 4:8 (April 28)
jlite: Hi. It’s been a while.
vladtheimpala: Oh, hey! Long time no chat. How are things going?
jlite: It’s fine. Everything’s fine. I guess. How are you?
vladtheimpala: Same old same old, nothing to report. What’s going on?
jlite: Nothing. I just wanted to apologize. I know it might be a late, but still, I hope it’s okay.
vladtheimpala: Ummm… Did I miss something? We haven’t chatted in like six months. You sure you have the right person?
jlite: Yes. I’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately, and I figured I’d apologize.
vladtheimpala: Is this some twelve step thing or something? Making amends? I mean, seriously, I don’t even know what you have to apologize for. I literally don’t remember anything you did.
jlite: Sorry. I knew this would be awkward, but I needed to apologize. For my own sake.
vladtheimpaler: Well, okay. What did you do, anyway?
jlite: I guess if you don’t know, I should probably just let it be. I’ve just been playing our last few conversations over and over, and it seemed pretty big to you at the time, but I guess I was wrong.
vladtheimpaler: Seriously. It’s all good. I just got busy, you know? Life moves along, people drift apart, it’s all good.
jlite: You don’t have to be nice. You could be honest.
vladtheimpaler: I’m being honest. Sheesh. You’re cool and all, but people drift apart and that’s okay. We could hang out sometime if you want, just not in the next month or so, things are getting busy for me. But after that, reach out, we can grab coffee or something.
jlite: Okay. Sorry for bothering you. I’m glad I didn’t do anything wrong that you remember.
vladtheimpaler: No bother. See you around maybe.
jlite: Maybe, sure.
… is how it would go if I ever bothered to reach out. So it’s just as well that I don’t.
Romans 12:2 (April 29)
Ravyn pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter’s mechanism and set it, upside down, on the pile of finished sheets.
They picked up the stack and tapped the edge on the table to straighten it. Fifty-two pages. Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, but enough to be exactly what it was.
The pages were filled with people that had not existed when Ravyn had started typing weeks ago. Not even in pencil. Not even in thoughts. Although, Ravyn admitted, each character was a piece of them. Ravyn was the entire puzzle, broken down into these fictionalized facets.
Fictionalized faces. Face, facet, facade: Ravyn rolled those words around in their head until the words were a single ball of clay from which Ravyn could mold themself.
This story was complete: This draft of this story was complete, but now was the work of pruning and growing, because this draft felt complete but unfinished. It was just the first draft, after all, and while Ravyn had labored over every word in the search for perfection, they knew it was still a long way off.
When they were in college, they had made a little side money by modelling. This was after their top surgery, soon after the incisions had mellowed into scars, and it was part of their healing to be exposed, fully. Stripped down in front of strangers. They had shaved their body for the exercise, even their head. Every hair they could reach.
They sat there, on a stool, motionless in a pose dictated each time by the instructor, surrounded by art students who wanted nothing of Ravyn, who didn’t even know or care to know who Ravyn was, who were just laying their own assumptions and their own beliefs on top of Ravyn’s bare body. That was the clothing they wore, and as they walked around the art show gallery at the end of the semester, seeing their own nudity through the canvassed lens of strangers, each containing a piece of the artist and a piece of the model, Ravyn realized their existence was in the collection of the pieces, and in some sum greater than that collection. The intersection, the union, and the infinity of angles of perception.
Despite it all: In those stranger-filled pages now on the table next to them, in those paintings where they had been dissected and reassembled by strangers, there was just a pile of imperfect masks under which, still unrecognizable, the authentic Ravyn slept.
Luke 5:20 (April 30)
Jessamyn sat on a bench in the middle of the city park, legs crossed into applesauce.
She opened her eyes slowly, blinking into the sunlight. Some gray clouds had moved in across the horizon; it would rain soon, but the sun would hold out for a little longer.
The Now that she had been inhabiting dissolved into the Then, and the flow of time returned in its cacophony. The chemically green grass was still chemically green; the traffic rolling past was still rolling past. She was still twelve cement blocks away from the parking lot where she’d parked the car.
But at least her breathing had calmed; at least she’d reached a glimmer of inner peace.
She closed her eyes for another moment, a moment of resignation because she had things to do, places to be, biological needs that were perpetually present to be met. Besides, eventually this moment on the bench would turn into its own obligation. Duty over bliss, that seemed to be the way of existence.
The smell of the air had turned from the subtle honey of sunshine to the mushroomy dankness of the impending storm, and while she knew the storm would likewise pass over, while she knew that the sunshine was the constant across which the glooming passed in its transience, she also knew she didn’t want to get caught in the deluge, not today.
So she slipped on her tennis shoes, sighed deeply one more time, and made her way across one, two… twelve cement blocks back to her car.
All text, images, and audio copyright Clio Hyacinth Corvid unless otherwise indicated. Header photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.