Nonfiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Happy Hour by Jeffrey Allen Mays t was early—the first days of social distancing. Shelter-at-home in our city was still three days away. One by one, restaurants were starting to close their dining rooms, and the roads were seeing less and less traffic. At the time we weren’t wearing masks, but the reality of the pandemic was growing. My son, who is in college, was realizing ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 A Pixelated Death by Paul Rousseau To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. —Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods he’s in the intensive care unit scraping along the edge of life. COVID-19 the diagnosis. ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Birthing During a Pandemic by Andrea Eisenberg weat fell from her forehead and fear spilled from her eyes. Her gaze darted from me to her husband to the nurse. Her arms flailed like snakes on Medusa’s head. Her legs pushed me away, pushing her up in the bed, as if she could push away her pain…at least, that is what she hoped for. Her husband was crying ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 On Hospital Waiting Rooms by Jillian Luft ll hospital waiting rooms are the same. Whether in emergency rooms, intensive care units, or those expansive areas near the front desk, each impersonal space is identical to the next. There are the cubed-shaped chairs carefully arranged around the sad TV set. The ugliest crayons in the box color the scratchy chair cushions, the pedestrian artwork, the dingy walls. ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Five Ways My Nervous Breakdown Prepared Me for the Pandemic by Amy Goldmacher ecently, I had a breakdown. It crashed over me and dragged me out to a deep, violent sea. I couldn’t eat. Food turned to dust in my mouth. I couldn’t sleep; I woke throughout the night with heart pounding, drenched in sweat, teeth clenched. My mouth was dry, my bowels liquid, my hair ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 The End Is Within Sight by Maria Wolfe ayla crept around the extra-large suitcase lying open on the bedroom floor. The bag smelled musty after a year in basement storage. “Are you going somewhere, Ryan?” Warning flares exploded before her eyes, and she struggled to remain calm. “A work trip?” “I’m leaving.” Her fiancé tossed his boxers into the half-packed suitcase. The tower of his socks toppled ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 What She Wears by Liz Betz y 87-year-old mother wears all of her old clothes, all the time, all of them too big for her now. She always bought good quality garments, and by God, she’s going to wear them. None of them are designed for easy removal, especially when she has an accident. She wears a towel around her neck, refusing anything bib-like. Or diaper-like either, ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 James by Jane Snyder here was so much to see, hear, feel, smell, taste in New York, we were overwhelmed. By dinner on the fourth day the kids said they were done. They weren’t doing another thing. It was so pretty that, when we left the restaurant, Times Square glowing in the spring twilight, I told them we should stay, walk around a little. “You can stay,” my ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Spidey by Austin Manchester y dad was Spider-Man once. Not in the movies or in the cartoons, but in hospital hallways and the rooms of sick kids. You may have met him once, I don’t know. He would take me on his road trips sometimes, his spider suit crumpled and lumpy in the backseat. “Dad, you ever gonna wash that thing?” “Don’t got time between fightin’ Doc Ock and ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #5: Heroes July 28th, 2020 July 28th, 2020 Lies I Tell My Father by JG Alderisio ow’s your job at the newspaper?” my father asks me. He is sitting on a couch, a plush throw blanket spread across his legs. “The newspaper’s fine,” I lie. I lie because it is simple. I lie because it is quick. I lie because it is easier than trying to explain to my father that though I have worked for ...
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