November 18, 2023 - Passenger Seat: part two
I sleep best when the world is waking up around me.
November 17, 2023 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “When the white peaks wake up”
The car keeps moving but the stars stay still. The drive is endless and the moon follows you the whole way, while you roll the windows up, then down, and stare at the dark road, thinking about the way you would like to meet someone and learn everything about them, how you would like to consider them for a very long time.
Two elks stand by the road’s edge. You want to tell them something. You want them to turn around and walk back towards the woods.
When you drive it feels like you are dreaming. Maybe it’s the way time moves, maybe it’s the mountains and how the sky spreads out around them. The bridges too, you think, how you bounce over weathered water and wind up somewhere else.
When the white peaks wake up you start pretending there is someone in the passenger’s seat.
You are home by morning.
November 14, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “We Come Unannounced”
Into feeling, I learned––
I am more than the clump of fear in my body.
I heard cars roaring–– I didn’t move.
I only became awake. This is a street I know.
I can no longer think I’m asleep because my lips
are still warm from your kiss.
You come to me in a hint of a song I’ve never heard.
The night shifts when we’re not looking out the window,
when we look at the lights inside and the sun rests
a night fuller than I’ve ever kept my eyes closed.
November 12, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “qam”
a face that won’t wipe away
the happiness of having a home.
we are hosted by our birthplace
sometimes. barred from the beds,
kitchen tables, saffron-drunken
laughs from the gardens––laying
after eating too many greengages and
sour cherries. my stomach is a pot
of sweet tea and mouthed apologies.
i know this trip to the bakery
at six in the morning is my last
time smelling the leaded gasoline
that burns my eyes and my lungs.
i want to drink rosewater, to wash away
the polluted sky of tehran from
my throat, but it’s blocked by tears
that haven’t been able to fall. the air
of silent fear, every day, under
the tunnel where the addicts live.
death in the same acre where I was
born, not every day is for the living.
my face is turning gray, thinking
of the market near my home.
the aisles smell like bleach, meat,
and some industrial soap. i want
to buy a doll-faced ice cream again
and race it melting to the apartment.
i’m living in two mirrors, but only
one of them looks back at me––
a woman whose home is a memory.
November 10, 2023 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “My body will come back to me”
In my mind it feels like I am moving through molasses, like there is a clear wall of jello wherever I want to walk, or like I am underwater and trying very hard to run. There are moments in my sleep where I move so slow it makes my skin crawl. Everyone else speeds by and it feels like I am stuck inside myself, like I need to burst open all the way and start over because my legs are dragging, everything is dragging, my limbs are too heavy and when I try to get somewhere it doesn’t work and I am always trying, always failing, always stuck somewhere I don’t want to be while the right place is right in front of me and if I could just get there, I think, things will change, I’ll be safe, maybe, and my body will come back to me.
November 5, 2023 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Familiar Moment”
I keep forgetting the names
of revolutions, remembering
people’s faces. Gone too far
by stepping on old photographs,
carving hearts into stone pillars
and tearing up into a stagnant river.
I’m older than the tree line
that guards our empty homes.
I pass by to wave at my window,
maybe I’ll see myself waiting.
Barely reaching eye level––again
the air feels like it’s leaving space
for rain that lasts overnight, washing
the pause into wakefulness.
November 4, 2023 - Aditi Bhattacharjee’s “Finding 52 in pursuit of a dream”
I knew I would remember this for the rest of my life.
It was not so much the six screaming kids, all under six in my zone on the flight I was taking to New York, nor was it the heavy feeling of leaving my family behind and crossing oceans in pursuit of a dream, the price of which I was just starting to understand fully, nor the innumerable unsolicited opinions and comments that I received from unexpected members of my social circle evoked by my decision to leave a lucrative career, a loving partner, a home and my beloved cat, that left them (re: humans obsessed with habitual comfort, physical safety and financial security) boggled, that made this memorable.
I had spent 16 hours navigating different airports and braving screaming kids and dealing with unexpected bouts of tears while staring at an endless carpet of clouds outside the window and an involuntary brain chatter that threw into doubt assumptions about what lay ahead at me. I pride myself in being emotionally strong and yet something was churning in my stomach. What I was feeling was completely throwing me off. I decided to shake off this looming gloom by watching a movie on the in-flight entertainment system.
I knew I would remember this for the rest of my life because what I finally ended up watching was the story of one whale called 52 in the vast unknown of the oceanic world trying to communicate with the rest of its community but failing to do so.
Just because it was different.
A hybrid, born from a fin whale and a blue whale. Its calls having a frequency of 52 Hz which are missed by other whales because they hear calls of frequencies of only up to 20 Hz. It has been roaming the oceans for more than 3 decades and even though it never hears back, it does not stop calling.
The pursuit of being understood. The search for connection transcends humanity. Cargo ships drown its calls, the underwater noise of commerce disorients it. However, 52 is hopeful just like me.
This story of what the world was dubbing the loneliest whale swimming in a sea of sorrow oddly settled my nerves. By the end of the documentary my mind was empty. No more brain chatter. I could not help thinking about the serendipity of my stumbling on to this film while beginning this solitary journey. Long after my flight landed, I kept thinking about it.
Now, when I walk the streets of Greenwich village alone, watch the skateboarders at Washington Square park alone, get groceries from Trader Joe’s alone, take the subway alone, go to the movies alone, cook dinner for one, sleep on a bed with an empty side, stop talking mid-sentence because the other person is not really there, shop at thrift stores with no one waiting outside my trial room to approve or disapprove, write first drafts that no one will really read (for the first time), I think of 52 and I am comforted by how connected we are in our loneliness.
Aditi Bhattacharjee is an Indian writer, currently pursuing an MFA in Writing from The New School. Her work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Evocations Review, Vagabond City Lit, The Remnant Archive and elsewhere. In her spare time she likes people-watching and city-chronicling.
November 3, 2023 - Amy Ceader’s “Every day such a holiday”
We live in westville Illinois. It's a small town. The most common cause of death is boredom.
My sister and I were best friends with Billy and Bobby Wilson. They're identical twins. They're in our class at school.
One day we were on shake rag road. Only one house is on that street. It's a dead end street. It is an old house with peeling paint.
Children come here an old lady said. She was short with scraggly hair and crooked teeth. She was scary looking. We thought she was a witch.
We went into her house. She had decorations for every holiday up inside of her house. It was kind of cool.
It's three o'clock. In England where I come from we always have tea at three.
We had hot tea. We never had hot tea before. It was good.
The lady's name was Mrs donnzerley. She used to work in a doll factory. She painted lips on the dolls.
Did you children know that every day is a holiday? Aren't you lucky to be here for international potato week she said
She made eight different kinds of potatoes for international potato week. We didn't know there were that many ways to make potatoes. We liked international potato week.
Mrs donnzerley always took us to the bus station every Saturday because her son was supposed to come visit her. He never showed up. We thought they had a fight.
When Mrs donnzerley died we found out why her son never showed up. His grave was next to hers. He died in the vietnam war. He was only 18 when he died.
October 31, 2023 - Aditi Bhattacharjee’s “Thursday Evenings”
Aditi Bhattacharjee is an Indian writer, currently pursuing an MFA in Writing from The New School. Her work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Evocations Review, Vagabond City Lit, The Remnant Archive and elsewhere. In her spare time she likes people-watching and city-chronicling.
October 29 2023, Rahil Najafabadi’s “Indigo”
The most common time I stand to watch you,
you emerge as there is no more day, and we cease
to the silence of farm breezes and some beads
that make noise in the absence of conversation.
No more people so there is much sorrow, like the color
of the sky while we meet. Now is the moment––
I know you are made of oceans and navigation.
You can’t stay to see the indigo of dawn,
But the ride to your deserted thoughts is colored too.
Red anger and blushed love all meshing with
the numbness that we feel when we turn gray.
October 28, 2023 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “The water will still be there”
You’ll drive in circles sometimes, missing your turn over and over again until something in you gets it right and once you’re on the road for a while you’ll go through lots of green and the trees will get taller and they will stand tighter together until all you can see is leaves blending into branches and overgrown grass reaching up between roots, and sometimes the road leads to the beach, sometimes to the lake, and either way there is an unbelievable blue blinking at you from behind the bark and so many small, strange things happen here you think they must really be happening here, like wearing his ring on a walk and watching the stone fall off somewhere in the woods and searching for so long, knees bent on the forest floor, bringing dirt up with them as you stand, telling the others to keep going, saying you’ll catch up later, saying the water will still be there when you’re done, and then you are back on your knees, burying your hands in the earth, believing it.
October 27, 2023 - Aditi Bhattacharjee’s “Borrowed Light”
Aditi Bhattacharjee is an Indian writer, currently pursuing an MFA in Writing from The New School. Her work has appeared in Lunch Ticket, Evocations Review, Vagabond City Lit, The Remnant Archive and elsewhere. In her spare time she likes people-watching and city-chronicling.