'To Have Him Back. Back, Back and Back' by Mairead Robinson

 

She nods when the coroner folds back the crisp white sheet, whispers, ‘Yes, it’s him,’ as her eyes close, and in those few swaying moments before she falls, she sees, on the inside of her lids, that he rises from the steel slab, walks backwards through the swing doors and sprints in reverse along the pavement, glancing pedestrians parting for his rewind to the dank-scented woods, where someone found him, and called the police.

He sits, knotty spine against tree bark, and he un-plunges the hypodermic, plucks it with a soft pop from his pulsing vein and casts it aside, then rising, skinny-legged, he strides back, back, back, to the filthy squat with its stain-sagged mattress to scoop tee shirts and jeans into a duffle bag. He kicks the door shut as he leaves and reverses home, pushing through the kitchen door with jutting shoulder blades and slides upstairs to unpack and refold the things she’d left clean-washed in his drawers. He climbs into bed as the sun rolls East to sink out of sight over Chinese fields blooming with poppies.

Back, back, back, growing smaller, to a teenager on his bike, standing on the pedals as he whizzes uphill to deliver packages for a tall furtive man with a pocket full of dirty notes wrapped in elastic bands.

And back, back, back to a lazy picnic afternoon when he hops up, sun-freckled and grinning, grabs her hand and pulls her, laughing, to the languid river to see them wriggling and darting, while up-stream, a needle-eyed heron stalks. She rummages through the hamper, finds a jam-jar and rinses it clean so he can scoop the tadpoles, and she twists the screw-lid tight, so they can’t spill.

'When I Heard My Ex Insignificant Other Died' by Debra Daniel

I thought about the artifacts I’d dug up on his land. Hours spent wedging trowel into hard ground uncovering broken spearpoints. Nothing left whole. 

I offered them back when we were done, hoping he’d say, “keep them,” but no, not even the rose quartz one he knew was my favorite.

'Operation Be Gone Interlopers – Monday' by Suzanna Lundale

 

06:00 Double-check bloody footprints along hallway ceiling and west wall

07:00 – 08:00 Repeatedly move things during breakfast prep & consumption when they aren’t looking

08:00 – 09:00 Slam books & drop mid-weight items every 5 minutes during Karen’s Zoom meeting in the next room

09:00 – 10:00 Break to recoup strength & lend a false sense of security

10:00 – 12:00 Focus on Randy – hover items on the periphery of his vision, intersperse with faint whispers

12:00 – 13:00 – Assess K & R mental state to determine whether to pursue Medium or Nuclear path for afternoon

13:00 – 14:00 – Karen Zoom call – flash messages in blood on the wall behind her for her to see on-screen

14:00 – 14:30 – (assuming Nuclear, because let’s be honest, this has gone on too long) Lay out K & R’s best outfits on the respective sides of their bed, as if in repose; render them shredded & bloody first

14:30 – 16:00 Gather pebbles on the property & apply ectoplasm, so they will glow in the dark; arrange into message LEAVE WHILE YOU MAY, INTERLOPERS, visible from bedroom window

16:00 – 17:00 Rest for final push

17:00 – 18:00 General oddities & unexplained noises while K & R finish meal prep

18:00 – 19:00 Show-time: Whispers building to moans over course of meal; centerpiece: animate the chicken in a dance while singing, “Hello, my baby! Hello, my honey! Hello, my ragtime gal!” Finish with chicken bowing to both K & R

19:00 – bedtime General low-level harassment: phantom footsteps, whispers, moans, fragments of aforementioned song

* Note: If need be, taps on bedroom window to ensure they look out to see message

'Sweet Nothing' by Marie-Louise McGuinness

I only said ’I love you’ because you said it first, I couldn’t leave the air empty and say nothing, though nothing would have meant more, nothing would have been the truth, but nothing would have hurt you, nothing would have buried you deep in heavy self doubt, nothing would have pierced you sharp with lightning blue heartache, so I said I loved you, I protected your feelings by not saying nothing and now, despite your words, I know you don’t love me, if you loved me, you’d have said nothing

'Eating barley porridge daily is good because ...' by Donna M Day

 

Health – More protein and fibre than oats. Delicious.

 

Hot – Helps you forget you slept alone. Again.

 

Heart – He hates barley, you hate him. Remember.

'Looking for Tigers' by Melissa Flores Anderson

 

My sister wants to see the tigers so even though we are all tired and cranky, we are walking through this bamboo forest, up a steep incline and I watch my son skip up ahead right by the sleeping tiger in the exhibit and I see him running to catch up to my sister who he used to call Auntie Auntie when he was a baby and I yell through the crowd “Not so fast, stay with Auntie” and her purple jacket turns a corner out of sight as she moves up the hill to the next exhibit and then when I round the corner I see her stopped with her foot up on a stump tying her shoe and I say, “Where is Lucas?” and she says “He’s not with me” and we all stop and look around and he’s not there, and panic roars through my veins and my jaw clenches as I freeze in fear that my 5-year-old is missing and I head back down toward the tiger cage while my husband and sister move forward up the hill and it’s only been minutes but minutes is enough for horrible things to happen and what if we can’t find him and what if he’s scared and my eyes scan every 4-foot-tall child in view for a bright blue sweater brown hair but there isn’t one that looks like my baby and then my husband walks into view holding the small hand we’ve been holding for almost six years now and my son has a pout on his face so at least I know he wasn’t scared, he’s just mad that he has to hold our hand now for the rest of the day.

' Into the Womb of Air' by Candice Kelsey

 

The wind is the better lover and the better mother that’s right

I said the wind is the one who softens into a breeze when it’s tenderness you need the wind is the better lover and the better mother when it caresses the back of your neck and whispers  affirmations like you’ve never heard before the wind will let you know it’s present without fanfare or love-bombing or fear obligation and guilt the opposite of a covert narcissist husband             or borderline personality

 mother the wind can sway the lines                                                          into an ovation in bark-needle praise of                                                                     private victories and occasionally                                                                  pick up its step to rattle this world from                                                                                 sleep like  a 

fucking good lover                                                                                           like your fantasy mother to remind you that                                   your living body your very body you’ve been taught                                          to hate the thighs and belly and arms 

your mother                                                     marked with pen measure twice cut once so you could imagine taking up less space slicing away the heavy flesh that body must be celebrated before it’s swept away into the molecules that body must expand and rise to become the byproduct of the sun a child of uneven topography wind is the planet’s lover eternal my mother ideal so I turn my face     into it.

'It could have been me. (It wasn’t.)' by Lucienne Cummings

 

I turned the house inside out searching for my missing lottery ticket, absolutely certain that I’d become a multi-millionaire.

 

I was one number out.

'He Was My Man' by Rachel Burrows

 

Kate watches Dad appear from the back. The pallbearers appear to be sashaying to the Nina Simone song. And, as if they’ve rehearsed it, they remove the coffin from their shoulders in time with the ba, ba ba, babababa ba. Dad would have found that hysterical. Feelin’ Good was an inspired choice - Rhian’s idea. The Floral Dance too. Dad spoke about Terry Wogan like they were best mates. He would have been devasted to realise he’d gone.

She is amazed at what Ro pulled off with the coffin - she had no idea that she was so talented – never given her much thought really. She had expected it to be easy, decorating it, but three wonky daffodils in, and she had had to admit defeat and call Ro for help.

He’d love this though! He’d be so proud of them.

 

Ro smiles as the bright yellow coffin makes its entrance. It feels joyful. There’s a stir of knowing laughter as the liquorice allsorts at the foot end become apparent. The bobbly ones had been hard to paint, but she couldn’t have left them off. Great tune too. Dad would have been so chuffed to see how the three of them had come together to plan this. Their unity was his lifetime’s wish.

When Kate finally relinquished control, her inner peace had been indescribable. Kate had seemed surprised to realise that Ro was a capable, grown woman.

Everything Ro had painted on the coffin reflected Dad’s life before the brain damage: the mackerel; the gorse wine; the beach. A beautiful man.

Rhian was getting up to read – a Dylan Thomas piece about the bay where Dad grew up, where The Hut was. The next time they went there it would be to scatter him. He’d be back at last.

 

Sue is mortified. What were the girls thinking putting John in a cardboard box? They were treating this like a party. The man she had loved, in vain at the end, was being danced down the aisle by strangers who looked like they were auditioning for Strictly. She does not feel good, even if that bloody woman singing does. Members of John’s squadron are here too! What must they think? She hasn’t had any say in today’s proceedings: their history was wiped clean by the divorce. Apparently, there won’t be any hymns. John hadn’t been a churchgoer, but you still needed hymns at a funeral. And now Dylan Thomas and that ruddy beach. Things had shifted in their marriage when she suggested selling The Hut.

The girls really have no idea what he was like!

She makes a mental note to plan her own funeral later.

 

 

'The Man at the Window' by Shilpa Gupte

 

He hides behind the curtains, peeping through the slits, checking my window to see if I am there; some nights, he stands by my window humming along to the songs playing on my radio as I lie in bed (my son said we live on the eighth floor and one can not climb that high so I need not worry, but…), and sometimes, he follows me as I walk to the fish market to buy fresh fish to fry and eat with rice for lunch; his long, ghostly shadow, his Kolhapuri chappals that creak with every step, the smell of his cigarette with its spirals of smoke hound me; I buy quickly–without haggling–and hurry home because I am scared he will try and hold my hand or touch my pallu without any regard for my grey hair or the sindoor I apply in the parting–I started applying the vermillion powder after my husband passed away (”we women have to fend for ourselves, you know!” I told my neighbour when she pointed out it’s against the custom for widows to do so) oh, this man, as old as my son, ogling, whistling when no one’s around, peeping through the curtains when I change my saree, and…and unbuttoning his shirt, like he did that day when I wore my favourite pink saree, no, the blue saree..uh, I forget, but I know his leering eyes follow me everywhere I go, even to the washroom…I know and the woman in the mirror also knows because she sees him, too…but someday, when my son isn’t home, I’ll confront him and give him a piece of my mind…someday…