Before the Diagnosis

In Red Rock Canyon, Kate hollers
over onslaught winds filling the car,
whipping our hair wild. She turns down
the whisper of radio, over and over,

like that will aid the volume. I was
picking guava seeds out of my teeth,
pretending not to flick them out the window.

The baby bird came out of nowhere,
smacking straight against the windshield,
It’s rock body bouncing off and back
into the dust storm. Our screams were

pitch-matched, in terror. Kate kept
driving with tears in her eyes, asked,
Can I talk about the orchestra in Phantom
of the Opera so I don’t cry?

I didn’t know yet if the lump on my
chest was malignant, hadn’t told
my mother that I found it 2 days prior
and it had doubled in size, rock-solidified since.

I could have used her sweet delusion
that everything will be fine, everything
is always fine always benign

her always hope faithfully believing,
despite the biome, every bird body
will land in a soft pad of grass.

By Riley Gable Fleming

God’s Children Are Little Broken, Imperfect Things Slipping Into Oblivion

God’s children are little broken things & i am one of them
when I asked God why my aunty is now one with red soil, He sang soothing blues
which only increased the anxiety & depression swimming in my soul.
to wear my grief with peace, i respire to inspire all day long.
so, people look at me & out of clay, they dig out a crown for me
a crown that says i am an inspiration to them with perfection as my last name
and i do not know how to tell them i am tired of respiring to inspire.

God’s children are little imperfect things & i am one of them
sitting all day & admiring other imperfect things, which i have painted in my mind to be perfect.
God’s children are trying to live this life while pursuing happiness and peace,
knowing that it will fade away when the end comes six feet under.
God’s children are trying to find a safe place to stay, because the bullets of this world always stray
until nothing is left but butterflies with broken wings.
tonight, i whisper to the Lord: may my brothers and sisters not become tragic tales
for we are already little broken, imperfect things slipping into oblivion.

by Testimony Odey

We walked around Lake of the Isles last midnight. I
asked her when she felt most alive, and she said in
the silence, so I said, we can just be silent for a
moment then, and we were, and we looked out at the
nearly-frozen lake, sky bright and white behind
frosted branches. I joked that NASA must have
cloned the sun and hid it behind those clouds,
because that’s how bright it was. She paused,
looked up, smiled, and said, no, it’s a white curtain,
and behind it God’s up late working. I’m not telling
this story chronologically, this was an earlier moment, before
the shared silence, still a holy moment, but a
different kind of holy, a lighter kind of holy –
anyways, what I meant to get to was this – so we
stood there, and my breath slowed, and I wasn’t
looking at her, and I couldn’t hear her inhales and
exhales, but I knew, without looking, that her breath
had slowed, too.  And I think that’s the simplest
definition of spirituality, knowing something
without any measurable proof. Somehow, in the
middle of the city, it was perfectly quiet, and
perfectly still.  I turned to her and whispered
(because it would have been a violation to speak too
loudly, like we were at church, and the lake was a
priest I didn’t want to speak over) sometimes, lately,
I’ve been getting this feeling – that this life, as
terrible and boring as it can be, is something that I
am glad to have. She said, me too.

By May Lishen

Sacred Enmity

At the first globe of blood
slipping down my thigh,
the Southern Baptist patriarchy
thrust me atop their purity pedestal.
With a glance,
they could check under my skirt,
no more than three inches
above my pubescent kneecaps.

They passed my uterus
from sweaty palm to sweaty palm,
weighing its worth and honor,
shoved it back up into place,
and stitched my vulva closed.

May hell not drip from here, they said.

I wobbled on one trembling foot
and pulled up
my slipping knee sock.

By Lorie Ann Grover

Sleepless wandering knees

we talk to the dreams
that we store in our
knees every time we
pray for the silence to
understand our noise

we hold remains of the
dead in boxes beneath
our tongues, the remains
of every dream that was
a stillbirth still unspoken

we feel our eardrums spill
out, pulled loose by our
memories breaking
through, to remind us
that not all music can
untangle every history

and some floors are cold
because we have a habit
of leaving the windows
open, always hoping to
let in storms that will
rearrange the mess when
flame fails to refine it

and when another day
breaks, we ask it why the
present turns to past so
quickly and why is it we
run from both: perhaps
because “to move” means
to be undyingly awake

and as we open ourselves
to the vastness

we laugh as much as we
know how to

until we learn

and god do we learn.

By Soyoon Koo

Soyoon Koo is a student of English Literature at University College London, a Word Tonic member, and a writer of rambling poetry and essays, who lives in three countries at once (and keeps pieces of many others with her). She is passionate about equal higher education opportunities for all students, the spirit of pure intellectual curiosity, and finding the best hot chocolate. Her work is upcoming on No Contact.