Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Paging Dr. Tactless by Scott Schaible  awoke in a parched, druggy haze, sunlight crashing through the blinds like a scene out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Hospital.  I was in a hospital.  OK.  I squinted and rubbed the crust from the corners of my eyes, vaguely noticing there was an IV tube in my arm.  Flowers and balloons filled the room.  How did all this get ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 One Photograph by Stephanie Provenzale-Furino y great grandmother cut herself out of photographs. Grainy black and white family photos from the 1930s and 1940s show a headless body next to her children. She hated her face I’ve been told. She hated her face enough to excise herself from her children’s history. Sometimes a sharp deletion with metal scissors. Sometimes a visceral rip of paper with her fingertips. There ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Proctor Two by Rachel Paz Ruggera pring was boiling over into summer, the week I was in the mental hospital. Two police officers escorted me to the cruiser and spoke through the opaque divider separating me from where they sat up front. The one driving had a stutter and walked beside me with a crooked gait. In the passenger’s seat sat another officer with thin, dark hair, Asian ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Caring for the Heart by Jen Lailey t is New Year’s day , and I am snowshoeing on our trails wearing my red Atlas snowshoes. I ba-dump, ba-dump along. It has been a hard year and I feel the weight of it. When I get back to the house, I think I feel a small stirring of gratitude and write “snowshoes” on a piece of paper, fold it, ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Cutting by Alison Watson eptember, 1994. “Give me my fucking oranges!” a voice outside was yelling. “Fuck you, you took my shoes!” came another voice. It was 2:00 AM, and I was wide awake, listening to homeless people arguing in the street, their voices carrying up to my open window on the Lower East Side’s Avenue B. But the noise outside was drowned out by the chatter inside my ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 The Sleepover by Kristin Schultz f you show us yours, we’ll show you ours,” Scott offered. I immediately knew what he meant. I looked to Darlene for help. She averted her eyes. I was on my own. Carrie giggled, “You mean our bottoms?” My body tingled and my heart raced. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I wanted. I considered what they said and debated the issue ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Catering to Cowards by Louis Fiset e cater to cowards,” brags the advertiser.  A smocked dentist blurts out, “Most of my patients have feathers -- yes, I have chickens.” I’m not sure who these dental cowards and chickens are and why they would answer such a call.  Perhaps many are “go’ers but haters,” that is, people with mild afflictions who can be soothed with nitrous oxide gas, a panacea ...

Nonfiction Issue #14: Acceptance April 15, 2024 Books and Galaxies by Millie Sparks e can’t get your medicine,” the pharmacist had said. That was all.  But I was panicked.  When you have schizophrenia, simply trying a new medicine could result in months and months of failures.  Hadn’t my whole life been a big enough failure without this added stress?  All first-generation anti-psychotics were in a shortage status. The FDA’s simple and very helpful reason was ...