A mixed media collage by Maria Blasingame

I was glad when you told me to buy a gun. I thought we could both go like that.

I swallow the air to capture its heartbreaks.

Maybe she’ll drive to the Santa Monica Pier— ride the roller coaster til she pukes.

Brushing hair out of each other’s faces, an earworm, touching as though to memorize.

Oil painting by Ella von Huene

A short film by Jaina Cipriano

enclosed behind enameled metal door,

waistband of black jeans circling ankles,

i open the missive from my mother

Mixed media collage by Irina Tall Novikova

“bad argument?”

“no, the only dream I’ve ever remembered”

watch us grow a little harder. ache a little longer. in defiance.

The shadowy, indeterminate veil, like the sunset’s unwanted gray clouds, fell back over her, and with Margaret no longer wielding a knife to cut through the deadness, she teared up, in gratitude, for seeing through and being seen through.

“your lungs fighting to get air

but this peace makes air seem insignificant”

Why didn’t we speak?

“let them, just once, bite the hand that fed them”

“you asked for it, didn’t you? and now you’ve run out of time”

“and the Red Nurse slows to the Beegees beat, the Registrar turning his attention to a dumbstruck Medical Student who is trying to ram a plastic tube down the man’s throat”