Poetry

"What My Grandmother Left Behind” and “Bromeliads” - Eila Chandra (1st place)
"2000 & 2013 & 2024” - Jane Lee (2nd place)
“Apology in the Margins of My History Textbook (Page 187)” and “I am Not a Bat Eater” - Katie Kim (3rd place)
"my desi” - Marium Zahra (3rd place)
"self-portrait as porcelain cup in victorian manor” - Leonardo Chung (Honorable Mention)
"Summer, Dissolving” - Collin Kim (Honorable Mention)
"abecedarian for motherhood” - Ashley Mo (Honorable Mention)
"Thanksgiving” and “The Year: Coda” - Vanessa Niu (Honorable Mention)
“Promised Rust”- Juliana Pan (Honorable Mention)
“An Immigrant Mother’s Dissertation on Americanzed Girlhood” - Angel Xin (Honorable Mention)

Fiction

"Healing Concerto No. 1” - Chloe Cho (1st place)
"Letters to the Homeless Man Across the Street” - Steffi Kim (2nd place)
"The Well Whispers” - Priyanka Kumra (2nd place)
"The Wolf Whisperer’s Chronicles” - Kianna Ori (Honorable Mention)

Eila Chandra

Flurries of erasers stuck in the carpet
Born from grey blizzards of frustration
Each scrap of parchment
Stuffed into a nook of her desk
Once the bearer of her grievances
Now a treasure chest

The sweet aroma of resin and varnish
Is still on my clothes from the last visit
Acrylic glazed upon the surface of the moon
Bled into the stars
And out of my eyes
Staining my cheeks
And staining the sky

Before, white canvases were never empty—
They were just waiting in a queue
Like a blank face in a checkout line
Expressionless
Until something moves
Except this room wasn’t meant to be still.

I wonder what it was like
To create cyclones with the flick of a wrist
To be satisfied with dissatisfaction

Time took her away
But what she created remains forever frozen
I will always smile at her signature
In every bottom right corner, reminding me
To believe in paintings
Like I believe in poetry.

Eila Chandra

I will let your tears fall between my lips
And form a Bromeliad with the space
Between my nose and jaw because
I refuse to swallow your sadness
And I want to teach you how
To keep it near your tongue
And that during rainstorms
Water can spill over and flow
From the most beautiful of places.

Jane Lee

dear mom / do you remember / 2013? i remember / you spun 한글 (1) into 영어 (2) every single

/ week for me. because how else would i / read with you, perched / on the library’s coffee-stained orange sofas / next to the pile of picture books / always by my side while i leaned / on you? i remember / sitting for hours, listening to your oddly intricate korean rendition / of the berenstain bears / or olivia the pig until the library was / thirty minutes away / from closing.

dear mom / did that remind you of 2000? i must have / asked you / a thousand times over / what being a 번역자 (3) was like, before / i sprouted in your stomach, ready / to digest your korean stories—until english became / as familiar to me / as hangul, and then until i couldn’t read / korean books meant for my age / anymore.

what is it like / to dilute korean / before feeding it to me / in english / every day?

dear mom / do the late nights spent at / the kitchen table remind you / of 2000 or 2013? dad is / already asleep on the couch / while i annotate viet thanh nguyen / and you read a korean ebook / from the publishing company you used to work for. when i ask you / what this passage means, which korean tradition / han kang is referencing here, does it / remind you of when i was five? or when you were thirty?

what is it like, knowing / we’ll never read another book / together in the same language?

dear mom / what i am trying to say is / please keep reading with me. please / keep analyzing books with me until / until the hours dance past twelve and you tell me / to brush my teeth. please / never stop reading / because i am so scared / when you do, i will have / lost two things i love. please / read that one picture book about the playground again / because the last time we did, i was / eleven and i cried because i didn’t / want to grow up.

dear mom / do you remember that book? i’ve forgotten the title / and the characters; i only remember / that the cat wouldn’t listen / to her mom and ran away. 무서워 (4). what / do i do if i forget to read in korean / if i can’t even read that picture book / meant for toddlers? do you think it’s inevitable? / who will i be when that happens?

dear mom / recently, i translated my first piece of writing / and every word reminded me / of you. i know / that when i am older / and i am forgetting the nuances / of korean, the sounds that don’t quite / sound like r nor l / the words for “translator,” or “scared” / i will turn to you / to translate for me one more time.

엄마, 나랑 이시를 읽을레요? 

mom, will you read this poem with me now?

Footnotes
(1) Korean (hangeul)
(2) English
(3) translator
(4) I’m scared

Katie Kim

Apology in the Margins of My History Textbook (Page 187)

you kissed my forehead and whispered
goodnight. i didn’t mean to wipe away
the traces of your affection in front of you.

while your homemade egg rolls sizzled
in the microwave, i pretended
to sleep, nesting in the blanket still
smelling of your cigarettes. stale, though
you brought warmth on a plate, egg rolls.
they hunched my spine with pleasure.

you probably thought i was
simply buried in my history textbook
that night. but i was on page 187, pretending
to read your veined hands—gleaming
and hypertrophied—as they curled
shadows around my door frame, peeking
in to check on me. though

you probably wanted a hey dad, even
the slightest glimpse of affection, i didn’t know

how. i have always wanted to say
hey, dad—to feel my hair twist perfectly
into a bun in your fingers, always
wanted love as warm as an egg roll
just before the timer sings. always

wanted our hair squiggling perfectly
in the Seoul wind as we played tag, our glistening
sunglasses brightening our view of June.

tonight, love is your tired hands securing
my locks in a thick bun, gathering each strand.

Katie Kim

for the two H-Mart attendants who shouted Bat Eater! at my mom and me
Westborough, Massachusetts, February 2023

Aliens, too, would think our brushed eyelids taper
sharper than the graphite points y’all press into paper
while casually writing ching-chong, ching-chong, thicker
than the dark smudge of our names erased
from your mouths. You shrink us into one
phrase—bat eaters—when in fact we are more
or less just carnivores probing for signs
of flying flippers and prickly feathers; instead
we have two packs of marinated spinach
we would rather thrust into the pottery bowls
we decorated with blue-inked magpies underneath
small scoops of Korean wheat rice, gochujang
painted across the sesame seeds y’all still think
crunch like sand against unconditioned teeth. But
they are for my ancestors, after all—for my parents
and for me—not for the hisses of y’all
who name my kin ni-hao’s or xiaolongbao’s. My mother & I
have flown across the Pacific, across the states, to see
the flowerbeds pepper your country of green traffic signs.
We’ve listened with our naked ears to the howls of bat eater!
And we’ve stood on this melting iceberg slowly starting to crack.

Marium Zahra

sequined dresses
rot in my closet
“vintage” earrings
and eid bangles now color dark brown
they used to be ruby red and gold
fit for a bride or a princess
or a little girl
only “desi” from cheap bracelets
that bended with a stroke
i’d never tell my mother how many of her bangles
i broke that way
twisting them into weird shapes
sometimes the alphabet,
sometimes hearts, sometimes eights
sometimes i think she wouldn’t even care
sometimes my own culture feels like hearsay
never a place for shimmer on my wrist
grandparents and cousins pass
without one chat
only flashes of biryani and mangos
they feel like imitations to follow
real memories, no eid parties
ramadan dinners, no chants of zindabad
no real idea where i come from
only imposter-syndrome
during cricket matches and bollywood movies
people always call me lucky
“you speak three languages!”
but i’ve forgotten my own
broken family and broken punjabi
i wish my “desi”
was more than things
more than pretend
but we moved too far for that
every bend of a bangle
destroyed practices
that should’ve seeped into my skin
and flowed through my blood
I forgot traditions
fashioned and followed for a millennia
in one generation
I killed a culture for my children
I wish my desi was more
I wish it was me, for them

Leonardo Chung

I rest on a crocheted doily, white threads stained
by light that rarely shifts.
Delicate fingers once lifted me—
prideful pinkies raised to match my thin handle.

Now the parlor stands silent,
emerald wallpaper peeling at the seams.
A second layer of faded roses. A lone candlestick tilting near the mantel,
wax drips frozen mid-flow. 

Once gilded, my rim
now shows a jagged chip at the edge:
a tiny gap collecting
dust; the same dust that coats
piano keys and tarnished portrait frames. 

I remember steam rising
from my pale interior, the swirl of green tea swirling leaves
—a bible unread. Soft clinks coughing beneath the chandelier’s glow. 

A single hairline crack runs along my side;
a fracture in an old story. Through it seeps
the memory of sugar cubes dissolving into black coffee, 
of petticoats swishing across parquet floors 

The hallway clock chimes every hour
with no guests to mind. Pendulum
swings in spiteful sorrow, matching each breath I cannot take.

 I am still here, chipped and watching, gripping
the powder of past afternoons—waiting
for the day someone lifts me again
& wonders who I once belonged to.

Collin Kim

grandmother's tile floor:
my knees pearl with sweat,
watermelon juice threading
between fingers. outside,
cicadas shed their shells—
how easily we abandon
what once contained us
in her blue bowls: ramyeon
steam rising like incense,
barley tea collecting sky
in copper drops. my tongue
remembers this—dissolving
sugar crystals
memory
summer rain
all becoming
absence
even Namsan's granite spine
softens in morning fog, time
moving through me like wind
through temple chimes: already
scattered
singing
gone

Ashley Mo

after i leave for school, do you fall onto your bed, face numb and
blue, and think of how you built me, piece by piece? back then, did your body grow cold like the two unblinking red lines glaring from their plastic supermarket sticks— daring you to say i am a mother now? touch
every inch of skin on your belly for signs of my presence.
find my heartbeat deep: i’m incomplete without you. when your white manager
gave you a shorter maternity leave than other women because you
had just left beijing to come to texas, young and sweet and naive;
identity splintering chinese/american,
just a few english phrases, i was there with you
kicking my legs against your womb because you only knew better
later, not at the time. in the shadow of america, you stood
missing
night markets of roasted duck skewers, sugar-coated gourds, spicy
octopus kebabs, your cheeks
pinking as you bantered with the vendors. you
questioned if moving to texas was
really worth it. was it? was it worth
stuttering in broken english, your w’s shrinking into v’s, trying
to tell doctors you hurt so much you couldn’t breathe?
under the layers of skin and worry, i curled up inside of you—
vigorous as a tangled tornado of arms and legs, until
water spilled from your every pore and you cried for relief, sanity—
‘xcept now, fifteen years later, you stare blankly, asking
yourself why in the world you gave birth at all, why you haven’t sealed me—
ziploc fresh—and sent me back where i came from.

Vanessa Niu

In the morning while I work at my desk you put
a hand on my shoulder and say Nothing
today? I say We don’t have to be conventional, you know.
But we do our best anyway. We play the livestream
from the Macy’s parade. It’s hard to tell whether the crowds
are cheering or booing or just talking. You say you thought
there was some protest about some war. We take turns
in the shower and steam winter off like dead skin cells.
I pour yang mei sparkling beverage from H-Mart into
a champagne glass for me, and red wine with a slice of
orange for you. You pull the cod out of the oven, turn
the fire off for the shan yao soup and bok choy. It is all
to say to the other, Do not let me suit my robe
tired of love. We watch the same detective TV show we’ve
been watching in the past week and laugh at
white people family dynamics. The daughter is so disrespectful,
I say. Why can’t she understand her mother is happy
solving crime? You call me annoying and tell me to
just watch. We burn the chocolate lava cakes from
Trader Joe’s on the pan. The mother solves the crime, mends
her relationship with her daughter, keeps her friends and
her secrets.

Vanessa Niu

Maybe we weren’t meant to be in this timeline.
I don’t remember much of the summer. I fall
asleep, sometimes, to the image of turquoise waves
crashing in a 4K video of the Mediterranean coast,
in our apartment above the gay bar. Past 4 a.m. 
and no one would shut up. Chatter melting
in with the crash of waves, a symphonic percussion.
The party’s just started. We dance
our non-intellectual version of Boléro beside the broken
AC, sweaty and meshed into each other like two
parts of a zipper. Our groceries rot in our fridge.
In another life, we’re rich and equestrian, wearing
polos and leather boots. I take your hand as you board
our boat, with the polished wooden steering wheel
with gold embellishments. You’ve got a bit of silk
knotted over your shoulders and there are no bugs
because we’re rich. You’ve got your cliff house to
go back to. I live indefinitely on that boat, sailing on
in your imagination, living only for that moment
between moments. Summer is the last season.
Whose interval ends us on a half cadence. Hard
to imagine while Kendrick plays downstairs.

Juliana Pan

It’s late July—bikes scribbling
across the beach, breeze passing
through me, wind chimes salting  

the forgotten shells. Even in
summer’s molasses sky, the world fades
behind the dreamy Van Gogh clouds  

god left hanging from his soaked
clothesline, still waiting
to dry. Hollow tree trunks poke  

like cigarettes from the sand—waves
lapping lazily as the tide wafts
through the hip-hop, the frisbees  

ricocheting over family picnics
like ours. I was nine, maybe ten
when I asked dad the question—  

did you & mom ever lock your love
onto the Alki Beach Bridge? He said
not even locks can keep love safe  

from salt’s promised rust. Safe from
the jealousy eroding the rocks
of their hearts into shoaled pebbles. Safe  

from the competition sudsing their shore
with distrust. Even safe from the shards
reflecting glimmers of each other’s sun  

until they splinter, drift to the bottom.
From the crash of waves, tickling
& ticking my oblivious feet.

Angel Xin

How do I know when to keep living?
The grave plots in the cemetery by the house tell me.
Every few weeks or so,
Another shovel tears into the haunted soil,
Another rectangular stain on the earth is spilt,
And another minute ticks away.
Those ghosts have always infested my brain
Like maggots digging holes through memories and
Only pausing to die and decompose.
Those ghosts have always influenced me
Like the one who lingers after the funeral
Screaming, silently sobbing into the empty, dead air:
Always just over your shoulder, too close, too close.
And I never asked if they were demons or malicious,
For, by the writing on their very headstones,
(All their anger and sadness and perpetual misunderstanding)
They led the same human death we all will—
And we were all just normal people.
My legs can walk me to the cemetery and beyond,
But usually, I am comforted by the final quietness I find.
We watch the weeds twist and grow over the disturbed earth
And breathe in the scent,
And exhale the rot,
And then take a shaky step back.
The ghosts have always followed me home.
It’s only now that the bodies have started catching up.

Chlo Cho

I took a deep breath, preparing to cue my chamber for our final piece. I exchanged a reassuring glance with my pianist and cellist, checking if they were ready to begin. As I lifted my violin and drew the bow across the strings, I felt a surge of anticipation. I played the opening notes of "Can't Help Falling in Love," and I couldn't help but smile as I saw the patients in the room perk up, recognizing Presley’s timeless classic.

At first, the patients merely listened as we played, their eyes closed. Although they were sitting in front of me, I imagined that they were being transported to another time. However, their collective silence broke when one patient started to sing along. Though she initially fumbled, the lyrics came more fluently off her tongue as her memory began to rediscover crevices of tucked away moments. Her voice grew more firm and confident.

“Only fools rush in . . .”

Other patients started to join her, like a gate had been opened. Their voices intertwined into one melody, but the stories their faces told were deeply personal and unique. Some gazed into the distance with eyes turned down, regret flickering across their features. Others wore soft smiles that hinted at bittersweet memories, while a few clenched their jaws, revealing the weight of tightly held secrets. “Oh, but I can’t help falling in love with you . . . ”

I could see a glimpse of everyone’s past, including my own.

#

“할아버지?” Dragging my feet as I inched closer to the bed, I squinted to adjust to the darkness of the room. The effort didn’t help much, though. I followed the sounds of heavy breaths, and my freshly woken little brother trailed along and let out a big yawn.

“I’m tired, can we go to sleep soon?” Small tears formed in the corners of my brother’s eyes as he let out his second yawn.

I patted the air around me as I walked closer, making sure me and my brother didn’t bump into the bedside table cluttered with half-read novels and framed photographs. Finally, my hands made contact with human skin, which felt colder than mine.

“Are you okay? You fell out of your bed again.” I shook my grandfather’s shoulders in an effort to evoke a faster response.

“I’m okay,” 할아버지 gasped, and even through the darkness I could picture him smiling.

“Sorry, I’ll go to sleep now.” He shakily got up from the floor, reaching over to ruffle my brother’s head, stretching his other arm to reach the night lamp. A golden gleam illuminated the room, and I could see my grandfather better. His eyes were bloodshot red, and his sweat-soaked tank top stuck to him.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded his head and waved at us to leave. He grimaced, but I didn’t think too much of it.

None of us did.

#

Have you really had a childhood if you’ve never snuck out to get food from the kitchen? As an eight-year-old, it was my favorite mission. I felt like a brave explorer on a secret quest for treasure. I’d put on soft socks to silence my footsteps, like a stealthy ninja on the prowl.

With a deep breath, I tiptoed down the hallway, avoiding the dreaded floorboards that creaked like a dragon's roar. I moved through the shadows, careful not to wake my slumbering family.

My heart raced with excitement as I reached the kitchen—my treasure trove.

Just as I was about to grab my treasure box of Cheerios, my mission of the night, I came face-to-face with a figure looming in the dark. I let out a small yelp, my heart stopping as I realized I wasn’t alone.

“Oh, you scared me.” I sighed when I recognized the face, my box of Cheerios relaxing by my side. “I didn’t know you were up.” The lights of the kitchen flickered on after my grandfather reached over and pressed the switch. Dark bruised bags decorated his tan skin, and a reddish hue colored his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I walked closer and gave him a small hug. His eyes were tired but still loving.

“I’m okay, you should go back to sleep. Don’t eat the whole box,” he teased. He mussed my hair, which made me protest.

“Come on! I’ve earned it!” I narrowed my eyes at him playfully, determined not to let my efforts in securing this treasure go to waste.

Despite the worry etched on his face, I slipped back to my room, the soft crunch of Cheerios momentarily pushing aside my concerns.

#

As his physical state continued to weigh on my mind for the next few days, I was determined to do something to lift my grandfather’s mood—what better way than to give him a surprise in the morning? Especially on his birthday?

For as long as I could remember, I would sneak up on my grandfather the morning of his birthday to surprise him, whether through breakfast in bed or confetti. At this point, it was basically tradition for me to hold a surprise on his birthday

Giggling, I tip-toed up to his room. I pushed the door slowly so it wouldn’t creak, and then I crawled to his bed. Attempting to add to the surprise, I inched closer to his face. Who doesn’t like surprises on their birthday, after all?

“할아버지! Happy birthda–”

My grandfather cut me off by grabbing my shoulders, his eyes wide, not with happiness but with fear.

I froze. He stared into my eyes, looking into them as though I was a stranger.

“Grandpa? What’s wrong?” I trembled, furrowing my brows.

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds. Cautiously, I whispered again, “할아버지?” My grandpa snapped out of it, regret washing over his face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was you,” he whispered softly. I was still shaking a little.

#

I woke to the sound of a man screaming. I jumped up from my bed. Was it an intruder? A fire? An earthquake?

As I ran toward the yelling, I started to recognize the voice. But when I arrived at the scene, I couldn’t see him. My whole family surrounded him. My height didn’t help me much in trying to see what was going on. My heart raced. Me and my brother stood at the door frame, sweating as the screams got louder. My brother began to fidget with the doll in his hands, and he clenched my arm.

“아빠, wake up, it’s just a dream, you’re home, you’re not at the war anymore,” my mother repeated over and over again.

I could hear the sounds of the lamp getting knocked over and the bottles of water hitting the wall. A lump formed in my throat. My brother’s grip tightened, and I stiffened, trying to tune out the scene. But it was hopeless—the cacophony of shouts, crashes, and my mother’s desperate pleas filled the air, drowning out everything else.

#

“Huh?” I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. “You want me to play violin for 할아버지?” I repeated, thinking I must have heard her wrong. I pushed the shopping cart with force then let go, watching it roll on its own.

My mother stopped the cart, placed a bag of oranges inside, and replied with a determined look on her face. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’ll help him feel better. It’s like magic.” My mother sighed and bent down to meet my gaze. Her words only deepened my confusion, but she stood up as if I should understand. “Can you run and get some mangoes?”

“How will it make him feel better? It’s just music,” I refuted. As I waited for a response, I grabbed a few mangoes, gently squeezing each one. I felt for that perfect softness—just enough to show it was ripe, but not so much that it was overripe.

“Music has the power to make people struggling feel better, 유나.” My mother took the mangoes from me and set them in the cart. “If you play something he likes, maybe ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ by Elvis Presley, I think he’ll feel a lot better.” I was still a little confused how music could have such an effect, but I just stayed quiet.

“So, can you do it?” My mother began to slap the watermelons.

I sighed, knowing she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Yes, I will.”

This was never going to work.

#

I felt warmth and embarrassment creep up my face as I played the final note. I should’ve definitely practiced a little more. I’d been playing violin for, what, three or four years already? The amateur mistakes I made in this performance were shameful. I dug my fingers into the strings, hating that I had just put on such a show in front of my whole family. Silence hung over our living room and I glued my eyes to the floor, unable to bear seeing my grandfather’s face.

Hearing a shaky breath, I finally looked up, my heart racing with dread as I braced myself for disappointment.

Tears slowly trickled down his cheeks, as he sucked in ragged breaths. He made a futile attempt to speak—but his words broke up and all I could hear were stuttering sounds. His choppy breathing combined with his watery eyes evoked tears in the other family members who were watching the performance.

They all approached him and comforted him. My grandmother, in particular, sobbed the most. As her arms wrapped around my grandfather, he leaned into her warmth for the first time since the war. She pulled my grandfather closer, as if trying to squeeze out all the remnants of his despair with her tight hug. My grandfather looked up at me.

“Again. Can you play it again?”

#

Every Sunday, after he came back from church, I’d give him a short performance before dinner. But one Sunday, that routine shifted.

As usual, I set up my stand, adjusting it so it would be at eye level. That day, however, someone joined me. I raised an eyebrow but tilted the stand to face both of us anyway. A thick strap hugged the back of my grandfather’s neck as the weight of the golden instrument pulled down and stretched his lanyard. My grandfather put his sheet music on the right side of the stand.

“The saxophone?” I squinted my eyes. I was used to the warm tones of strings, not the bold, brassy notes of a sax. Would our sounds even blend? I felt a mix of doubt and curiosity.

My grandfather nodded proudly. “I just rented it from a place down the block.” His eyes, which I was used to seeing clouded and distant, sparkled with a light I hadn’t seen in ages—like they were pulling back from a long shadow. Seeing the happiness light up in my grandfather made the corners of my lips twitch up.

When we began to play “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” the pairing was anything but harmonious. The sax and violin clashed in a way that made me wince, but it didn’t matter. The joy radiating from my grandfather as he stumbled through the notes overshadowed any imperfections.

#

The patients' eyes sparkled as they sang the most famous line of the song. “For I can’t help falling in love with you.” Their voices rose together, filling the air with warmth. I exchanged glances with my pianist and cellist, and we continued to perform. More patients began to join in, their voices intertwining in a joyful chorus. One patient tried to shush the others, but the voices overwhelmed him, and all you could hear in the room was the resonating sounds of the patients all singing in unison.

Goosebumps trickled down my arms. It was chilling—eerie, almost—to have over fifty patients singing together. An overwhelming sense of unity enveloped the room. Each patient was facing a different battle, yet each of them started to be uplifted by this simple song. My eyes scanned the room, and all the patients turned into a choir of carefree souls bound together by the healing power of music. Even the patients, who had not (according to the staff) spoken in years, joined in.

“Music,” my grandfather once said, “. . . can heal wounds we can't see.”

Steffi Kim

Jamie, or whatever his name was, blew into the corner of Centennial Park and Crawford Avenue sometime during the last recession. His knees buckled and he folded onto the pavement, his piss splattering across the sidewalk. I never knew where he was from, Jamie of rusted parka and sepia shoes. Jamie never bothered me until last year, when Daniel called and said the kids had witnessed a “traumatic event” involving the Homeless Man and that I better be more careful. Something about a shouting match in the fists of July, a glinting blade, and a dead cat strewn across the gutters. I asked my son about it, and he shook his little head.

“The Homeless Man scared me, Mommy,” he whispered.

That’s when I began to pay attention to the Homeless Man. The more I watched him, the more certain I became that he just couldn’t stick around. There was something unsettling, something sinister about his presence. The first envelope, a beige-colored thing, I delivered while he was sleeping, watched it flutter through my manicured nails into the depths of his accordion case. His ear twitched ever so slightly and he gave an abrupt cough, before he was tugged back into syrupy fits of sleep.

#

Dear The Homeless Man across the street,

I hope you are doing well. I learned of a disturbing incident with a cat and am writing to inform you that the apartment under which you now “reside” is no longer available to outsiders.

Sincerely,

A concerned neighbor

#

I pressed my face to the apartment window and waited until the Homeless Man’s head jerked awake. My son was behind me in the dining room and kept making “vroom vroom” noises as he wheeled a fire truck across the table.

“Mommy,” he cried. “What are you doing?”

“Shh, honey,” I whispered, which was ridiculous since the sidewalk was two floors down and the street was empty. “I’m just trying to look out for you.”

The Homeless Man eventually fumbled through the accordion case and pulled out my letter. By then, the world was all periwinkle and harsh shadows, and perhaps he couldn’t make out my writing because the letter once more fluttered into the case. His expression was hard to make out, but I thought I saw him chuckle.

I cursed under my breath and resolved to not let the issue slide.

#

Dear The Homeless Man,

From what I can gather, you have spent the better part of four years under the candy cane awning doing God knows what. My children will begin kindergarten and third grade shortly, and the bus stop is right by your corner. I have to leave for work early in the mornings but can’t leave the children alone with you there. I urge you to relocate somewhere else.

Sincerely,

An upset mother

#

That night, the geraniums cried on the windowsill and my kids awoke with dewdrops spun across their upturned faces. It was raining on the way to the bus. When Daniel picked up the kids on Friday night, he nodded his head towards the Homeless Man, who lazed around on the curb with a filthy cardboard sign. The clouds were still sneezing a little, and the Homeless Man simply let the raindrops roll down his hunched back.

“Loser’s still around, huh?” Daniel said.

“Not for long,” I assured him.

“Come on, Mellisa, you know I don’t like the kids being around the city so often.” Daniel gave me one of his exasperated looks. “You know, the kids should join me out in Trentwood more often. There’s more space. It's cleaner.”

I crossed my arms and waited, like the Homeless Man, for the cloud front to pass.

#

Dear The Homeless Man,

Jamie, right? I’ve warned you now. There is a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen down near the bank. If you do not leave this block by January I will have to notify the cops. My husband is very displeased.

Merry Christmas

#

The snow that year was timid and dribbled into the sewers. I came down with an awful runny nose and fever. Bedridden with Wheel of Fortune spiraling on the tv, I called up the city police commissioner to explain the incident.

“Ma’am, being homeless is not a crime in this city,” he grumbled over the line.

“Yes, but isn’t screaming at neighbors and killing a cat?”

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“Yes,” I said. “My son told me himself.”

He laughed, a gravelly, cynical sound. “Children make up stuff all the time.”

On February first, Daniel sent me the divorce papers. It wasn’t a surprise, but I knew just who to blame.

“Daddy’s house is more fun anyways!” my daughter cheered.

#

Dear The Homeless Man,

My husband has left me and now wants to take the kids. I am sure you know of tragedy in your life, too. From one soul to the next, please do not make my life any harder. How many letters must I send before you get the message?

#

When I dropped off the letter, I swore one of the Homeless Man’s eyes bulged open. It was black and scarred across the eyelid. I expected him to shout, to cry out, but instead his lip curled upward and his eyelashes kissed once more. I hesitated, then dropped a few George Washingtons into the tin. I made it a habit now, every Friday on my way to work.

#

Dear The Homeless Man,

Are you a veteran? There are veteran services, you know, that can house you somewhere else. Please see the attached flier.

#

Dear The Homeless Man,

Have you ever gotten a job? I cannot stand the sight of you with your pathetic sign on the corner any longer. The public library has job-finding services. You should do something with your life.

#

Winter ran away, but the geraniums on the windowsill never blossomed again. Sickness once more leached into my bones, and soon I could scarcely leave bed.

“Pneumonia,” the doctor pronounced. “A bad case.”

My leave of absence from work turned into an extended leave—unpaid of course—and culminated in a letter with “We regret to inform you . . .” Daniel took the kids for six weeks, so I could get better without distraction, he said.

#

Across the street, the Homeless Man ripped a piece of cardboard into a new sign. Down on my luck, the black marker read. The Homeless Man sat on his blanket and stared into space.

Whenever a car would pass he would give a weak smile, before that, too, crinkled and burned at the edges.

The neighbors stopped by with soggy brownies and a bottle of wine.

“Thank you.” I croaked out, despising every inch of their pitying glances. “Anything helps.” The next notes were shorter, scrawled out in a fever dream.

#

Dear Jamie,

Have you ever waited on child support checks? I never thought I would. Life is strange, huh?

#

Hi Jamie,

Do you have kids? Why don’t they take care of you? I think my kids hate me now. You should go and look for your kids, wrap your arms around them before it is too late.

#

I stopped leaving dollars and began leaving quarters in the tin, which clunked sullenly against the bottom. The kids complained about eating leftovers and I snapped at them, told them to shut up and eat the mac and cheese, I didn’t care whether it was congealed or not. Daniel called and said he was concerned about the state of my life.

“No Daniel,” I seethed. “I’m doing just fine. I can take care of myself.” The tower of grimy dishes in the sink said otherwise. I sat on the couch and clenched my stomach, which always seemed to be writhing inside out these days.

#

The landlord sent me a notice. You have until May, it said.

#

Jamie,

When did your life stop and everything start falling apart?

The Homeless Man never replied.

#

One day, he disappeared from the corner. The accordion case, the blanket, everything, was gone. I walked over and sat beneath the cursed candy cane awning and wept until my eyes crusted over with sugar and glaze. His cardboard sign was in my mailbox. God Bless You was all it said.

“God bless you, Jamie,” I repeated into the April air. It would be summer soon—the kids would be out of school and I would be out of luck.

I stopped addressing letters to the Homeless Man across the street. That would be crazy. But I couldn’t just stop. Instead, I started writing them everywhere—on the back of cereal boxes, grease-saturated napkins, polaroid photos—and addressing them to my future self.

Priyanka Kumra

Dust collected on the chairs and the shelves and the doors. It was swept to the floor and in the bin when company came. When the door slammed, the dust rose in the air and settled around again. There was no place to put it. Put it in the hall and it floats back in. Put it in the room next door and it seeps through the cracks. Put it in a locked box and your clothes and food and precious dirt will replace it. It was the hopeless, grim war everyone fought—if the dust can be beaten back a day longer, if we can pretend that it is gone, even though tomorrow it’ll be there, twice as thick—they never quite finished that thought. Everyone living in the Maze was waiting for something. Maybe it was death; they weren’t sure. All they knew was that before them there wasn’t so much dust, not so much they woke up choking on it, nor so much that a layer was caked on every face. If they unlocked the great metal doors at either end of the Maze they could put it out there. But then maybe there would be dust outside too, and it wouldn’t do any good. Anyway, the doors were shut and no one could open them.

They called it the Maze because that’s what it was. The middle of it was where the farms and the water pumps were. You could go down the big hallways and see the house-rooms. If you went too far down, the big hallways would turn narrow and dark, and there would be innumerable locked rooms. The map in the meeting room showed the doors, and some of the little halls, but it was too dark in the Maze for anyone to add to the map anymore. The batteries went out twelve years ago, and they all feared the darkness. The bright ceiling of the middle-room was the center of the known world, like a sun. When it went out every night, there was no difference between the sight of closed and open eyes. All of those who lived in the Maze eked out a narrow and tenuous existence in their crypt, sweeping away the dust and toiling in the dying dirt for their rough pittance, and feeling the pulse of the darkness in their hearts when it fell.

But Ellin found a battery.

The big hallways were always dim, just catching the light of the sun-ceiling in the middle-room. Ellin’s house-room was way near the back, almost in the little, forbidden hallways. She didn’t mind, but the dark made it hard to see the trash chute down there, almost invisible in the floor. She was running because she felt like it, even though her mother and father had told her not to, and she fell. It was just like they told her. She was running and running and her footfalls resounded against the walls. Bang-bang-bang-bang, and then it was silent when she stepped out onto air and fell down the chute. Someone came out, yelling something about it being nighttime and no time for infantile games.

They didn’t hear anything else, and shut their door again. Ellin choked on the dust at the bottom of the chute. Her heart, which had been so high as she’d felt the exhilarating cool air run by her face, hurtled to her feet. She cast about desperately, but the dust was thicker than water and it burned her eyes. Her flailing arms slammed against metal, then she jerked her right arm back—into a pocket of air. Her lungs screaming for that air, she pulled herself out of the dust.

For a minute she sat there sobbing, shaken and terrified that her play-world could so fast turn on its head. The echoes of her crying halted her, making her disgusted with herself. Crying was a waste of energy. She dried the snot from her nose and the tears from her eyes as best she could—Ellin had always been a precocious child. When the world righted itself she opened her eyes—and there was light!

The passage she was in turned to the left, and from there emanated a warm, pulsing glow. Ellin blinked, her eyes adjusting slowly. There was no light in the under-tunnels, no light anywhere except the middle-room, and furthermore it was night-time, so there wasn’t light in the middle-room either. But there was a light in the trash chute. On hands and knees, she crawled cautiously towards it. Rounding the corner, she gasped.

The light she had seen was radiating from a window behind a grate. Screwing her eyes up against the glare, she peered into a fingernail’s width of light. At first it was blinding. The cloudiness evaporated finally into the corners of her eyes, and Ellin gasped again. The chute opened into a second middle-room, impossibly more vast than the first, or than anything Ellin had ever seen. As the first middle-room, the ceiling of this room was bright with powerful, unexpendable electric lights. Trees grew in the space with dirt—distant cousins to the shriveled ones above—and there must have been hundreds of them.

“Forest,” Ellin whispered, the word unfamiliar in her mouth. It was a forest. Even from the beginning, before the dirt started running out in the middle-room and eating became a battle with the apathetic soil, the forests were gone. And now there was one in front of her, a shocking incarnation of the dingy schoolbook pictures.

She pushed against the grate gently, then more firmly, but it did not give. This did nothing to abate her excitement. The world of a child was scarcely finite; obstacles like this could be circumvented a hundred ways. There was someone upstairs with the key who could open the frame. She almost forgot that she was trapped in a dusty prison. Ellin fell asleep on the metal floor, utterly spent. She slept a dreamless sleep.

She woke, sore, to the abrupt click of light filtering through the dust into her passage. Her parents would be looking for her soon. She passed a few sundry minutes gazing through the grate again. It was still daytime, and she was now almost certain that there were cows and horses inside, eating the grasses and the wheat. She saw them moving around lazily, basking in the heat of the sun-ceiling. Ellin reaffirmed that she would be hailed as a hero, until by her reckoning it was three-ten past lightening and no frantic voices shouted her name above.

Impatient, Ellin sullied her heroic visions incrementally by shouting above.

“Hey! I’m down here!” No voice called back in answer. “Hey! There’s more dirt down here,” she yelled, loudly as she could.

Finally there was an answer. “Dirt?” asked a voice, muffled by the dust. “Are you in the tunnels?”

“Someone’s in the tun-nels!” shouted another voice, childishly, as if they were telling a bad deed.

There was a great deal of scuffling above, and Ellin caught the voice of her mother. “It’s you, isn’t it, Ellin,” she said tersely.

“Yes,” said Ellin guiltily, feeling heroism was not all it was cut out to be. “I only fell—but I found some dirt! There’s light down here, there’s cows and animals and—”

Ellin’s mother sighed, but everyone else in the crowd gathered around the little innocuous dust chute was silent.

“What sort of dirt?” someone asked playfully, as if humoring the girl’s fantasy.

“Oh, it’s the rich, loamy kind—like we found under the big meeting building when I was born—” Ellin started.

“What kind of cows?” someone else interjected, laughing.

“Well, they’re black and white and brown, and kinda fat, soft-like. They’re in the meadow eating daisies and laying in the sun with their calves.”

“Are there plants down there?”

“Why, there’s a whole forest of them, more kinds of green than are upstairs, and with apples on them, too. There’s fruit trees, mangoes and peaches and oranges and the sort, and no one there to pick them.”

“No one’s down there?”

“No one. It’s so deathly quiet, like Eden before Adam and Eve, like they tell us in school. I think it could be Eden, anyway. It’s like, there’s so many growing green things, and it smells so nice—like dirt used to smell, only better. There’s clovers in the fields. You could lie down on them and sleep, just like a bed. There’s vegetables in the fields, there’s chickens in the coops, and not anyone to keep you from them. The sprouts poke just above the earth. It’s a little wild, like it’s been growing alone for years, but there’s no weeds and there’s so many vegetables. I bet we could put up houses in no time. Remember how we used to weave before all the cotton died out? There’s cotton in there. There’s sheep. The trees are cool and shady, like you could picnic under them, and the meeting room is made of brick.

“The old middle-room is so dirty in comparison. It’s a new middle-room, and everyone could live there, it’s so big. There’s not a speck of dust anywhere.”

Silence from above.

“Well then, get her up!” a voice said, gruffly.

Ellin heard shouting and clambering about and at last a rope came down to her through the dust. “Hold on,” someone told her, and pulled her up.

She emerged from the dust, coughing.

All of the able-bodied and strong in the Maze gathered round with shovels, and put the dust of the dust chute in great big plastic bags. It filtered through the air, but for once, no one cared. Everyone was too exhilarated, full of energy and life at the thought of the second middle-room. School was called off, and all day the children who were too young to help watched them toil in the hole. Shouts rang out through the big hallways, resounding like Ellin’s running footfalls twenty-some hours before, when the passage was uncovered.

Then the drills were brought in since the passage, while big enough to accommodate Ellin, was far too small for the workers. They hammered on, even through the night, the light of the sparks revealing the dusty faces around the chute.

At last, when the grate was uncovered, a gasp of surprise and excitement rang up through the gathered crowd. Ellin was the heroine of the day. Carried on her father’s shoulders, she called, “Open it!”

The strongest of the workers hefted her pick, smiling uncertainly. She paused, glancing up at the crowd, waiting for their assurance.

“Open it!”

“Come on!”

With a great swing, the pick crashed into the grate. A hush rang through the room when it threw up sparks. The worker dislodged her pick. The crowd was silent, disbelieving.

Ellin wriggled down her father’s back hastily, jumping down into the hole. No one stopped her. She went up to the window-that-was-not-a-window which had been covered by the grate. She didn’t know what it was. It was broken now, though. The fields and forest and cows and sheep and vegetables were gone, and smooth black glass had replaced them. She stuck her hand in the hole that the pick had made. Jagged shards of glass cut long, jagged red lines, but her hand numbly groped and—a battery!

“I found a battery!” Ellin announced. No one looked at her. The crowd began to disperse. “We can look in the little hallways now!”

The grimy faces looked only at the floor. They moved slowly, but with resigned purpose. No one swept away the dust that night. They let it come. They let it sweep about the town, not ignorant, but uncaring. The dust was here. It would always be here, and there was no use hiding it.

The men and women of the Maze were no different to each other. They feared the darkness still and abhorred what the light revealed. But when they had drawn the spark of life out of their chest, it had been extinguished brutally.

They had not found what they had been waiting for. They had, instead, discovered that there was nothing at the end of their wait.

Priyanka Kumra

Beneath the olive groves of Deir al-Balah, where the Romans once buried their dead, there is a cistern. My grandfather called it Bir al-Ghazali, the Well of Whispers. Its stones are older than the Quran—Canaanite hands stacked them, Philistine blood seasoned the mortar, Mamluk conquerors deepened its throat to hold the reigns of empire. Now, it holds girls.

I come at dawn, when the muezzin’s cry tangles with the growl of tanks. My fingers skim the water, cold as the coins Crusaders left in dead men’s eyes. The first time I pulled up a girl, her braids were woven with Byzantine glass beads. Her face, half-eaten by time, wore the serenity of a fresco saint. I knew her: the baker’s daughter from the 1948 exodus, the one who drowned clutching her father’s key. Or was she the Mamluk commander’s child, thrown down the well when Saladin’s men breached the gates? Gaza’s history is a palimpsest; its griefs bleed into each other.

The water resists. It prefers its dead. I wrestle them up anyway—girls in linen shifts stained with pomegranate dye, girls in Ottoman silk eaten by brine. Their wrists bear the rope burns of slavers, the tattooed crosses of Coptic converts, the numbers of UN ration cards. I press my forehead to theirs, inhale the musk of centuries: myrrh and siege dust, orange blossoms and phosphorus. “Who built you?” I murmur. “Who mourned you?” Their lips move, but the words are Phoenician, Aramaic, the pidgin Arabic of Bedouin traders.

At night, the dead teach me their rituals. A girl in a headdress of cowrie shells shows me how her people charted the stars through the cistern’s reflection. Another, her feet bound in Abbasid silver, hums a lullaby the Fatimids banned. When drones sever the dark, their voices fray into static. I cling to the youngest—a child of the Nakba, her dress crisp with salt from the sea-road to Jordan. Her blown-wide pupils are frozen mid-flight. “They shot the donkeys first,” she mouths. “We carried the babies until our arms broke.”

The cistern’s walls are graffitied: Crusader crosses, Ottoman property deeds, the acronyms of NGOs. I chip at the mortar with a spoon, unearth a girl curled like a fetus in the hollow between empires. Her hands clutch a clay lamp from Tell es-Sakan, its oil long congealed. When I light it, the flame gutters, revealing Roman frescoes beneath the plaster—dancing girls, their faces erased by some zealous khalif’s chisel.

Gaza’s gods are fickle. They demand amnesia.

The elders say the cistern was a sanctuary once. Fatima al-Zahra, the Mamluk architect’s wife, designed its arches to mimic the curve of a mother’s hip. She drowned herself here when the Mongols sacked the city, her jasmine perfume lingering for seven generations. Now, boys lob grenades into the water to “cleanse” it. The explosions cough up shards: a Hellenistic lyre, a British rifle, a Nokia phone fused to a child’s rib.

Today, I find a girl armored in Crusader mail, her surcoat stitched with lilies. The metal screeches as I peel it back—beneath, her skin is mapped with irrigation canals, the ones the Egyptians dug when Gaza was their granary. Her heart, a dried fig. Her hair, wheat from fields the settlers burn each harvest. I wrap her in my keffiyeh, sing the verse of Al-Fajr into her ear. “Consider the ruins of generations . . . Did your Lord not deal with the people of ‘Ad?” She does not stir. The past is a stubborn corpse.

I lower myself into the cistern, let the water stitch my wounds shut. Down here, the wars blur. A Turkish bullet nestles in a Hyksos skull; an Israeli drone’s camera winks beside a Byzantine icon. The girls float toward me, their arms heavy with heirlooms.

Take this, they beg, pressing a Frankish coin, a shard of Nakba glass, a ration card from the ’56 blockade. Remember us. But my pockets are full of stones. At sunset, the women arrive. They lower buckets, not for water, but to sift the cistern’s leavings. Um Ahmed finds a girl’s diary, its pages swollen with siege. “I named my doll Nuseirat,” it says. “Now Nuseirat is gone.”

Laila, the blind midwife, cradles a Roman funerary mask. “She has your nose,” she tells me. We laugh, sharp as shell fragments.

When the tanks return, I climb onto the cistern’s rim. Let them see their inheritance: a girl from every razed city, every purged census. They level the groves, but the roots remain, gnarled as the veins of a hand clutching soil. I spit into the water. It ripples into a thousand faces rising—then sinking, patient as the pharaohs who built their tombs from our sandstone.

One day, a girl with my chin and a stranger’s rifle will kneel here, drag up a corpse in a thobe stitched with UN logos. She’ll puzzle over my ID card, my earring shaped like Handala’s fist. “Who were you?” she’ll whisper. The water will answer in a tongue she’s forgotten.

Kianna Ori

Sun-cycle seventy-three, early spring, year of the harvest, sun high.

The snows are finally receding, and greenery is sprouting from the ground. Food is scarce, but alas, so many of us have passed from the long winter that there is no worry of starvation. It is both a blessing and a curse.

Hunting in the snows was drudgery. With the men most dead or dying, the task had been left to those that were able-bodied, which included not only myself, but my young kin also. Though it took multiple sun-cycles, we managed to track and wound a colossal moose, and waited patiently for it to succumb to its injuries before disassembling it to pack home.

It kept us fed for a long time and allowed some of the sick to heal. A shame it was rotten after eight sun-cycles, though. Alas, casing it in snow can only do so much. Perhaps my mother could try to keep flesh longer with herbs, now that they are sprouting.

#

Sun-cycle eighty, early spring, year of the harvest, moonrise.

Our ways of death are traditions, and those traditions must be kept. When one of our own passes, we commend their soul to a higher power of which we are not sure. It is nice to believe that one is watching over us. Or it used to be.

After the loss of my mother, soon after the snows receded, suddenly I could not comprehend that a higher deity was watching over us. If he was, how could he allow this to happen? Was he worthy of our respect and worship if he was capable?

Myself and my kin saw to the burning of her body, as is customary. I loathed the thought, but tradition must be upheld. The smoke from my mother’s pyre curled into the night like the whispers of forgotten gods. Though I was watching her ashes drift on the breeze, I could almost feel her beside me, leaning her head on my shoulder. Silent tears ran down my face, stinging my cheeks in the bitter wind.

My mother was the tribe healer, our guiding force in times of fear and need. Resilient, wise, resourceful, and nurturing, she was everything I can not be for others. Her golden eyes always sparkled with compassion, even in the harshest of times. Often she was sought out for advice and was known for being one of our most determined. The loss of her has dealt a great blow to our tribe, but we must move on in order to survive. Grieving will not fill our bellies.

#

Sun-cycle eighty-three, early spring, year of the harvest, sundown.

The gentle breeze is still sharp with cold. It lashes against my face, but I stubbornly refuse to relinquish my position beside the tree. A herd of wildebeest graze in the meadow, eagerly rooting around for new greenery sprouting from the ground, unaware of the danger I pose.

A sharp glimmer of brilliant golden eyes strikes me from across the clearing. They flicker once, no, twice, before disappearing into the underbrush. My eyes catch a flutter of movement nearby as a massive wolf silently pads towards the herd. Almost simultaneously, the wildebeest lift their heads, sensing peril. More wolves reveal themselves, encircling the herd, who grunt in alarm and surround the young protectively.

The wolves immediately identify the weakest of the group, and nip at its heels to drive it away from the herd. They focus on it, tearing at its hide until it collapses with a groan. It is a brutal, ferocious, beautiful process, and I admire the wolves’ companionship and coordination. As the remaining wildebeest scatter, the canines lay into its flesh with vigor, feasting until their bellies are full enough to feed their young. A pair of what look to be adolescents yip and playfully bound around after eating their fill.

The wildebeest, nearly stripped bare, lies in the snow. Its eyes look as if it could stand up at any moment, though I know it has passed. As soon as the wolves have satisfied their appetites, I watch them skulk into the woods and vanish.

I yearn for something with which to have that kind of companionship.

#

Sun-cycle eighty-eight, early spring, year of the harvest, sun rise.

I have been tasked with foraging this sunrise, though the berries are not yet in season. It is a menial task, one that would have been done by the elders, or our young, if we had any. I had argued that meat would be more substantial, but one of the women has a child that will soon need the delicate flesh of berries. How it managed to survive the winter, I cannot fathom. But alas, as much as I loathe the task, it must be done.

I trudge along, eating a piece of dried meat, when a splash of red graces my vision. Eagerly I head toward it, expecting plump berries, but instead stumbling upon what can only be described as a sorry sight. The red I saw out of the corner of my eye was not berries, but blood.

A lone wolf cub lays on the ground, dejected. From my position, I can observe it is a male. He observes me with eyes I could only describe as my mother’s. They are a beautiful golden shade, and appear to be filled with compassion, just like hers, and though I know he is probably contemplating how his teeth would feel in my flesh, I can’t help but feel compelled to help him.

Distracted by his piercing gaze, I barely register that the mother may be nearby. I drop to the ground, immediately noticing the gash on the pup’s flank. It is large, but manageable. I feel an urgency to help, but stay down for many, many moments until I am sure the mother is not near. If I could somehow take the cub back home, I am sure there is a salve that could heal the wound. However, that is dangerous, and there is a chance that none of my tribemates will be willing to help. Nevertheless, I cannot shoo the wanting to succor away.

I bring out the dried meat from my parfleche, and the pup whimpers. I wonder how long it has been since it has eaten. I gingerly reach my hand out to him. He snaps at me with a growl, and I flinch and drop the meat. The cub lunges for it, barely chewing before choking it down. He is frightening, but he is also endearing, I think, much like a newborn.

I hold out another string of meat, my hand shaking slightly, yet I find myself talking to the pup in a childlike voice, asking him if he would like more. He cautiously leans forward and takes it from my hand, stretching the gash and making him whimper. I manage to feed him one more piece before he appears to lose consciousness. Maybe he was in more pain than I thought. I gently lift him into my arms and start the trek home.

#

Sun-cycle ninety-two, early spring, year of the harvest, sundown.

I sit with the wolf cub in a small cavern, relatively distant from the rest of the tribe. They are wary of him yet, but one of our healers was kind enough to make a salve for his wound. I think he is warming up to me. He restlessly nuzzles into the deer pelt I laid him on, whimpering, and without thinking, I scratch the space between his ears.

At first, the pup regarded me with a wary gaze, but even over this short amount of time, his growls have softened, often replaced by tentative nuzzles against my hand. In his beautiful eyes, many a time I have seen caution and apprehension, but it is slowly softening into something that appears almost like trust. Or perhaps he is just too weary to fight me.

He startles awake with a weak growl, but doesn’t nip at me. I feed the pup a piece of meat, continuing to stroke his ears, and he simply stares at me with those eyes before settling down with a sigh.

I decide I will call him Koda.

Friend. Companion.

#

Sun-cycle one-hundred and forty, midsummer, year of the harvest, moonrise.

“Koda, kunan!”  

Koda lunges for the elk, tearing at its throat until blood sprays across the grass. The bitter, early mornings spent shaping Koda’s savage instincts have borne fruit, allowing him to become elegantly vicious. Where he once stumbled in the snows, he now moves like the moonlight over a frosted field.

I nock a singular arrow and pierce the elk’s eye. Not even a moment later, the great beast collapses in a pile of weariness and passes onto the heavens. I say a quick prayer, thanking it for its life, before cutting its flesh into more respectable pieces.

Koda sits patiently on his haunches, practically foaming at the mouth at the delicious flesh of the elk. I hold out a small piece for him and scratch his ears. I tell him he is a good boy. His gaze still shocks me with its similarity to my mother’s kind eyes, and every time I recall that moment that I first stumbled upon him, I believe more and more that that is why I felt the need to help him as a pup.

I hand him a piece of meat to carry back and scratch behind his ears one more time before we begin the journey home. Quite some time later, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of movement. I turn to see two unique, golden eyes, identical to Koda’s, observing me like I am prey. Whether instinct or clairvoyance, I know, with no shadow of uncertainty, that this is his mother.

For a single moment, the time it takes for an icicle to drop or someone’s breath to leave their lungs for the last time, I am fearful. I do not know how Koda, my beautiful, loyal Koda, will react to his mother. I took him from her. I will not blame him if he chooses his kin over me.

For an almost imperceptible instant, Koda stands frozen, his gaze flicking between me and the she-wolf. I hold my breath, close my eyes, and say one brisk prayer, thanking the one, of which I do not know, for my life, and for Koda.

I hear a growl and open my eyes, ready to be faced with bared teeth, only to see that Koda is not threatening me, but his mother. I realize, in that split second, that he has chosen me, as I once chose him. Saliva drips off his jaws as he growls at the she-wolf in warning, the sound echoing off the surrounding trees and stone.

She hesitates, then almost seems to dip her powerful head before withdrawing and prowling deeper into the woods. I breathe a sigh of relief before collapsing onto the warm earth, holding out my arms for Koda. He burrows into my shoulder, and I soothe myself by stroking his thick coat. I could not help but wonder if he feels the same ache for his mother as I do mine. Perhaps it is this shared longing that binds us so.

I was very given to yearning for something with which to have that kind of companionship as wolves do. I see that, despite everything, I do.

Friend. Companion.