Prose

Julia Coursey

No Nose

I could spend a lot of time describing Veronica to you, but the fact of the matter is that only one thing about her appearance is at all important, and that is that she has no nose. She has always had no nose, as far as she can remember, whether she was born without it or suppressed a terrifying nose-based accident. Feel free to imagine her however you like, but remember this: no nose.

She had a false nose for most of her childhood, a cosmetic prosthesis that she would outgrow periodically, leaving her to seem too big for her nose in many of the photographs you might now consult to see if, in fact, she has always been noseless. The older she got, the more beautiful her noses became, each one embracing a different aesthetic. Think of your friend with the glasses--when she got a new pair, her whole face seemed to change. Now, imagine that with a nose. 

She is quite proud of the variety of noses she possesses. Observe, this nose has the redness of a blooming rose, while this nose the regularity and length of a garden hose, and, if you turn off the lights, this one glows. Veronica makes her own noses now. One might describe her as a place based artist that place being the face and the main medium the nose as rendered through rare and expensive curios and the taxidermied animal parts.

I suppose I prefer a permanent nose, but this is more for the purposes of smell than beauty. It would be a no-no to mention this to her, as she also lacks the ability to smell. That part of her face is simply flat (like a hockey mask) and there is nothing beneath it except more of the things that are beneath other parts of the face, the parts that don’t smell or see or taste. The doctors told her that she was missing not only the nose, but the whole nose apparatus that allows one to use a nose for smelling. They wanted her to get a permanent nose just to seem more normal, but after a lot of yelling and a little oh welling, they decided to allow her to remain noseless as long as it didn’t cause her any distress. But one doctor had this to say when she left that day, “she’d cut off her nose to spite her face; it’s a disgrace.”

As you can probably tell, there is a twist coming in the form of a smell. 

One day, when presenting her noses at the Venice Biennale, Veronica felt a tingling in her face. She assumed that it was an allergic reaction to the nose she had made of chicken feet or perhaps a tumor from using her cell phone too much. But no, it was a nose. Over the course of the biennale, the nose grows until it can be seen even from the back rows. For the first time, she knows what it is to sneeze and blows her nose with great aplomb. She imagines she can smell, but she smells all wrong. The new nose only smells those things that others cannot smell, namely, feelings. 

Veronica is scared of the doctors now, as the stench of their rage was overpowering. The doctors believe she is making it up that this is all a ruse and rather than choose to have them sew a nose to her face, she has chosen another set of surgeons. One doctor lags behind that day and to see what her file has to say about where she lives. He purchases a hockey mask and a knife and lets himself in through the bathroom window she has left open. He is the first person to smell the inside of her house, where she lives alone with a number of cats that have distinctly marked their territory. Veronica can smell the cats now, of course, but only how the cats feel, not where they have peed. Indeed, it is this mass of feline feelings that disguises the doctor’s kneeling beside her bed until he presses the blade to the side of her head and the last thing she smells is delight.

Julia Coursey has stories included in the Best Shorter Fictions anthology and The Anthology of Babel. Their work has also appeared in Sou'wester, Gigantic Sequins, Booth, Psychopomp, Joyland, and The Collagist, among others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and is a Fulbright research fellow at the University of Debrecen. Read Julia's work at juliacoursey.com and find them on twitter @CourseyJulia.

Emma Brousseau

Sunscreen

The day before the sun would explode, Beth and Marisol stood sweating before 364 paintings taped to the apartment wall. Marisol had painted the suns on a variety of materials, including old homework assignments, scraps of fabric, and tiny canvases, with each date marked in the lower righthand corner. The suns varied in size, though the largest was only a square foot of cardboard. The smallest was near the end of the sequence leading up to today’s date, painted on the queen of hearts.

The suns’ color changed over the course of the paintings from pale yellow to angry orange to red, getting more and more fiery as time marched towards their demise. 

All of the scientists’ graphs and speeches over the past year had made Beth panicked, depressed, and irritable. But Marisol’s wall of suns horrified her. She had wanted to take a picture of them, spread the truth over social media, but she couldn’t move. She thought she was a believer before – one of the few – but now, it was all she could think about. 

“There’s still time,” said Marisol, after a while. “If you wanted to fly home today.”

“No,” replied Beth, unsure which statement she was disagreeing with as she gazed at the suns. “I’m staying.”

Though Beth adored her girlfriend’s paintings, Marisol’s daily sun studies unnerved her. A year ago, Marisol had started painting the sun exactly one hour after sunrise each day, making herself late for school on a regular basis. And each night, she would show Beth the finished product over video chat and then, once Beth had arrived in New York for the summer, in person.

Marisol was saying something about getting out of the apartment. Beth couldn’t hear it. Beth couldn’t hear herself breathing.

She registered that Marisol was hugging her, trying to pull her out of her panic. She was numb save for Marisol’s dark, short hair curling into her neck and Marisol’s lips moving against her shoulder, speaking in soft tones that Beth couldn’t hear. She felt beads of sweat from Marisol dripping onto her skin.

Beth’s brain was overheating into a familiar pattern of existential dread. Beth had always known she was going to die. Ever since her goldfish went belly up. Five years old, she had scooped Tuna out of the water, cold scales against her child-sized hands. Since then, she’d conceptualized death as a sort of drowning, filling her lungs with thick water until she couldn’t breathe. 

But it wouldn’t be like that. It would be like burning to death. It would be burning to death.

Beth could hear her own breathing again, speeding up and hiccupping. Something wet was in her hand. A dead fish. No. Condensation on a glass of water. Marisol had gotten her a glass of water. 

Beth mechanically forced her arm up, tipping the water into her mouth and swallowing hard. It forced her body to focus on functioning rather than her impending doom.

“Thanks,” she muttered after downing the rest.

Marisol stared at her with a look Beth recognized. She had freaked her out. Again.

“I’m fine now,” Beth assured her. “Just, you know…”

Marisol nodded, still wary, but Beth knew her girlfriend had made peace with their fate, concentrating instead on how to spend the time they had left. Marisol even had a motto: “Don’t worry. What will be will be.” But Beth found that impossible to accept.

Something warm touched Beth’s upper calf, contrasting with the cool glass in her hand. Marisol’s basset hound, Albert, was licking the sweat off the back of her knee. Absentmindedly, Beth leaned down to stroke the dog’s silky, brown ears and scratch the white patch between his shoulders. Albert shivered in delight. Drool production increased exponentially from his jowls. 

Marisol was still looking at her, hesitating. 

“What?”
“You dropped your phone.” She nodded at the floor. 

Still crouching with Albert, Beth looked. Her phone was face down on the trendy, fake concrete floor of the apartment. Gingerly, she picked it up and turned it over. The screen was blank and cracked. She stood and tried everything to turn it on. Pushing buttons and waiting and waiting. Nothing. 

“Dang,” said Beth.

Marisol giggled, wrapping an arm around her waist. “The word you’re looking for, my little midwestern baby, is shit.”

“Shit,” said Beth, watching as Marisol laughed again and feeling her arm tighten around her, hand pressed against her ribcage. Marisol’s parents were at work. They were all alone today.

Beth’s heart pounded in her ears. The nights at Marisol’s apartment had been difficult. Her family was kind and welcoming, but the girls had to share a bed. This meant that Beth spent her nights awake, too aware of Marisol’s soft body pressing against her back, too aware that she could roll over and kiss her girlfriend’s full lips and touch her breasts under her pajama shirt and

And Beth was too chickenshit – to use one of Marisol’s favorite phrases – to do it. Of course, Marisol who had more experience would never push her.

 “What’s wrong?” Marisol, still holding Beth, turned serious.

Beth forced herself to smile again, missing Marisol’s laughter. “Nothing.”

“Have your parents called yet?” Marisol asked. “I can text them my number.”

Beth escaped her girlfriend’s arms, crouching down with Albert again who kept trying to lick the ruined phone in her hand. “They haven’t called.”

“Do you want to call them?” Marisol pulled her own phone out of the pocket of her jean shorts.

“It’s only 10:00,” Beth assured Marisol and herself. “There’s still time.” They had the whole day. Well, most of a whole day. The scientists had predicted it would happen tomorrow morning. 7:00 a.m. Eastern time. 

Like most of the older generation – and much of their own – none of their parents believed. Beth had spent a long time trying to convince her parents that the scientists weren’t “just trying to scare them” and didn’t “have other motives,” much longer than it took to persuade them to let her stay with her girlfriend for the summer.

Marisol studied her, not unlike the way she stared at a canvas when painting, like she was figuring her out. Beth continued to pet Albert as innocently as possible.

Marisol was interrupted by her phone dinging. She glanced at it and turned off the alert. Beth could see the screen in her periphery. It was the count-down app marking the hours until the apocalypse. An animated skeleton with a cowboy hat announced that they had 21 hours left, and that they “Better start looting!” or “Destroy your friendships with a board game one last time!”

Beth didn’t need an app to remind her about death. 

“What were you saying earlier?” she asked. “Where did you want to go?”

Marisol grinned. “It’s a surprise.”

“Where – ” Beth didn’t get the chance to finish. Marisol grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the wall of doom. At the door, she picked up an overly full backpack, paused, and set it back down.

“Wait, you need sunscreen, right?” Marisol asked, already walking further into the apartment and turning into the bathroom.

“For the explosion of the sun?” Beth asked, grabbing her wallet and sunglasses. “Totally.” 

She did burn like an Irish infant seeing the sun for the first time, something Marisol and her Puerto Rican heritage teased her for. But somehow, Beth didn’t think sunscreen was the solution to this particular issue.

Marisol reappeared with a smirk and a tube of sunscreen. She tossed it into her already stuffed backpack before forcing the zipper closed. They outfitted Albert in his pink harness and two layers of dog booties to protect his paws before slipping on their own sandals and heading out the door.

The girls walked down the block in the same clothes they’d worn for the past few days. Marisol in her jean shorts and a tank top. Beth in a loose dress she’d found at the bottom of her suitcase. The sun above them looked mostly normal, maybe a little bigger, maybe a little darker, but the changes were most dramatic just after sunrise, when Marisol did her paintings. 

Everyone had adjusted to the slight change in light during the day. Traffic was normal. People walked with their heads down, always quick, always busy. The heat was harder to get used to, and some people who might have worn suits in the past had replaced them with linen shirts and shorts with plans to change once at their office. Albert’s usually slow pace was made even slower by the awkwardness of his steps managing the booties. Beth, holding his leash, didn’t push him.

“So,” started Marisol, “you’re gonna call your parents later?”

Beth watched Albert stumble towards a trashcan and lift one of short back legs. She shrugged.

“I think you have to,” said Marisol, her voice low, casual. “You’ll regret it if you don’t talk to them.”

Beth didn’t respond. If she called, she would only try to convince her family that the end was nigh. Her parents should have a day of not worrying about their daughter’s sanity. Beth had already tried everything to convince them. She needed to stop trying.

As Albert lowered his leg, someone screamed.

The sidewalk traffic around them stopped, everyone looking up. A businessman –stubbornly still wearing a suit – took off his sunglasses, a glisten of tears on his cheek.

Overhead, the sun was now bright orange, a single goldfish scale. Pink and red streaks radiated from it. A sunset at midday.

More people on the street began to scream, to shout, to whimper. Albert tipped his head back and howled, matching the cacophony that was so different from the normal sounds of the city. People were stepping out of their vehicles to stare at the sky. No one honked. No one moved. 

While Beth watched the other pedestrians and would-be drivers, Marisol’s eyes were drawn upwards, pupils tiny as she gazed into the sun. 

“I have to paint that.” Marisol dropped her backpack and sprinted back towards the apartment, leaving Beth speechless behind her. Albert continued to howl. Another hound dog picked up the call somewhere down the block. Long, low yowls offered up to the blazing sun.

Before Beth could react, a wave of heat hit her so hard that she felt as though she was sunburned on contact, UV rays straight through her skin. Maybe this was it, a day early. And Marisol wasn’t beside her.

Most people were still staring at the sun, their faces shadowed in brilliant orange. Others were speaking rapidly into their phones. A few were getting back into their cars, bringing back the familiar aggressive shouts and honks of the city.

Albert stopped howling. He stretched up towards Beth. His stubby front legs waggled in the air for a moment before he fell back to all fours, huffing. By the time Beth looked down at him, he was trying to gnaw off one of his booties. To distract him, Beth hunted in Marisol’s abandoned backpack, reaching past granola bars and sandwiches in plastic bags. She found a water bottle and one of Albert’s bowls. She filled it and then rubbed his velvety ears as he drank the bowl dry. Beth was packing back up when Marisol reappeared, a huge canvas under her arm and a bag of art supplies over her other shoulder. 

“Let’s go!” Her eyes were still on the sky. “I want to capture this color before it changes.”

“Is it gonna change?” asked Beth. “Before…”

Marisol was already rushing down the sidewalk, weaving between people still staring at the sky or similarly running through the streets. “No idea!” 

“Where are we going?” Beth was practically dragging Albert to keep up.

“Fire Island!”

“Oh!” Raised in the Midwest, Beth found even New York beaches fun. And she had always wanted to go to the notoriously gay island. She supposed it was now or never.

Marisol led them through the chaos to the Murray Hill LIRR station. The peachy light cast over the city continued to enhance the day’s heat. Albert was panting more than usual. 

People were shouting. Crying. Laughing. But they were in a bubble, separate from the panic. Beth felt strangely calm. She was glad she didn’t have her phone. The internet probably exploded ahead of the sun. Besides, Marisol still had hers. Just in case.

They ran down the station’s stairs and arrived at the platform as a train pulled in. They shuffled inside with Albert in between them. Everything was normal here, crowded and noisy. These people hadn’t seen the sun yet.

Once inside a half full car, Albert whined and lay down on the cool floor. 

Marisol sat down, leaning the oversized canvas against her knees. 

Beth claimed the seat next to Marisol who said they needed to go all the way to Bay Shore.

“Here,” said Marisol, turning Beth’s shoulders so she was facing away from her. “Let me braid your hair.”

Beth complied, stretching her legs out on the row of seats in front of her.

Marisol worked the elastic out of Beth’s blonde hair. “God, your hair’s greasy.”

Beth didn’t defend herself. It was hard to focus on person hygiene at the moment. She felt the tension against her skull release as her ponytail fell out. Thoughts of the apocalypse fell out of her head. 

“Ahhhhh, I love that,” she said as Marisol’s nails scratched lightly over her scalp. She thought about other places Marisol’s fingers could touch her then quickly shut down the thoughts. They had time. 

A little bit of time. 

“I love you,” Marisol whispered against her ear. She separated Beth’s hair into three sections and started intertwining the strands. Just before they reached the Bay Shore subway station, she tied off the braid with the elastic. Beth thanked her, the feeling of her girlfriend’s fingers in her hair still making her head tingle.

They headed out with a reluctant Albert. After the cool underground air, it was hotter than before, to the point that Beth felt dizzy like she couldn’t see properly. Her vision was filtered red. She blinked.

No. The sun overheard was bright red. The sky had shifted from peach to crimson interspersed with gray clouds. People on the streets were screaming, and Albert answered with a series of howls. Beth’s heart dropped. Had the timeline been moved up?

“I missed the orange!” Marisol complained. 

“Can I see your phone?” 

“You gonna call your parents?”

“No,” said Beth. That hadn’t been the plan. “Maybe.” She logged into Marisol’s phone and started searching the internet. Which had exploded. Sorting through panicked journalists, ads for sunsplosion-shelters, and a wave of brand-new, incomprehensible memes, Beth found the scientists’ newest statement. After a passive-aggressive “we told you so” in academic lingo, they said that the explosion was still projected for tomorrow morning. Beth went back to the home screen and tapped the cowboy skeleton. It was shaking its hips. “Don’t forget to get a good night’s sleep before getting up bright and early for the big day!” 19 hours.

“Can I have that back?” asked Marisol. “If you’re not gonna call your family, I need to call mine. They might be looking for us.” She paused. “They might believe now.”

Beth handed Marisol her phone back, the plastic case already heating up in the sun. 

“Can you find the ferry dock?” asked Marisol, already dialing.

Beth spotted a sign that said FERRY with a huge arrow. “Yep, I’m pretty sure.”

Marisol tucked the canvas under her arm, put the phone to her ear, and held out her hand to Beth. “Lead me please.”

Beth transferred Albert’s leash to her other hand and took Marisol’s. She followed the signs, leading them all to the dock and up the ferry’s gangplank. Albert’s stubby legs scrambled up behind Marisol who managed not to get tangled in the leash. Several other people were on board already, mostly tanned and glitter-covered men. Fire Island was the place to party, and there was no party like the end of the world. 

Beth pulled Marisol towards seats near the cabin, the roof providing some shade. She was crying a little on the phone. Beth wondered if her own parents had tried to call her. More and more people boarded, crowding the wooden deck. Techno music was playing from somewhere.

As Marisol hung up, the surrounding crowd tilted off-balance. The ferry detached from the dock, causing the crowd to cheer wildly. Marisol was pushed into Beth’s arms.

“How are they?” asked Beth, holding her steady.

Marisol stared straight ahead, swaying with the boat. “They believe now.”

“Oh.”

“They want us to come back.”

“But,” started Beth.

Marisol shook her head. “I already said no, but I’m supposed to call them again later.”

“Are you going to?” 

“No.” Marisol said, clearing her throat. “I don’t think so. You gonna call your parents?”

“Maybe.” It was Beth’s constant state of being.

“I’m going to see if I can paint somewhere.” 

Beth reluctantly released her, and Marisol kissed her quick before moving through the crowd, the big canvas pushing people out of the way for her. 

Beth picked up Albert’s stocky little body, carrying him as she followed Marisol. The music got louder the further into the crowd they went. Unable to shout above the noise, Marisol pointed up. Without waiting for Beth’s response, she tossed her canvas and bags up on top of the ferry’s cabin and climbed up herself. 

Beth carefully handed Albert up to her waiting arms before following. The ferry was moving fast enough to create a breeze in the feverish heat, but she could feel the heat of the roof through her shoes and radiating up her bare legs. Albert was stepping gingerly. 

After digging in the backpack, Beth put down two layers of towels to protect them from the scorching roof as Marisol set up her canvas and spread out her supplies.

As her girlfriend began to paint, Beth got out Albert’s water bowl again along with his dog food. He ate and drank sloppily, ears trailing like a dual cape. He had lost the two booties for his right front paw at some point. Beth took the extra bootie from his left front paw, hoping he couldn’t feel the heat through just one layer. Beth herself was beginning to feel deeply sunburnt, especially on her cheeks.

Marisol was gazing skyward, brush in hand. Ignoring the chaos below them, Beth watched her work, experimenting with textured brushstrokes and accumulating vibrant red, orange, and yellow paint on her brown skin. She was so focused, intent on her task.

Beth couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Despite their position on top of a ferry with a dying sun above them. 

She wondered what her parents were doing right now. Would it be like when the tornado sirens went off and her father stood on the porch watching the sky turn green and funnel clouds descend. Only then would he go to the basement with her mother. But the house had never actually been touched by that particular disaster. Would they watch the sun burn together now? Stay outside as long as possible before seeking a useless shelter, still hopeful that this alarm would be like the rest? Would they want to talk to her before the end? Had they already tried?

The humid breeze slowed as they reached the dock at Fire Island, leaving only inescapable heat layered over their skin. From the ferry’s cabin roof, they could see a host of people, dowsed in panic and glitter, waiting on shore. Several of them were clutching phones, crying or laughing manically. They wanted on, but the partygoers on the ferry wanted off. The masses of people collided on the dock and gangplank. 

Beth and Marisol witnessed the traffic jam, unsure of how to continue until Marisol looked skywards. 

“The sun,” she said. The clouds were being burned off, and the color was changing again, becoming a darker red, almost rust-colored. No matter how many times Beth tried to blink it away, everything was awash in red sepia. The water lapping at the ferry’s side was the color of red wine. Or dried blood. Either way, it couldn’t be very deep this close to shore.

“Might have to go swimming earlier than expected,” Beth said. Marisol grinned in agreement.

The area around the cabin was beginning to clear as the crowd tried to disembark. A few people fell into the water, the slight waves hitting them at chest level or above. Beth hopped off the roof. Marisol handed Albert down before collecting her things, cursing under her breath as she singed her fingertips against the rooftop. She met them at the railing away from the mobs, holding the canvas over her head, drying paint pointed upwards. 

“Wait,” Beth stopped her from climbing over the railing. “Let me go first.”

“You have to carry Albert,” said Marisol. “We don’t know if he can swim. He doesn’t have the legs for it.”

“Your painting.”

“It’s fine,” Marisol assured her, stretching her arms to hold it higher. “I’ll just touch it up once we get to the beach.”

People from the shore had pushed through and were now crowding the deck, crazed with panic.

“We have to go.” Marisol sidled up to the railing, lifting one leg over and then the other, bracing herself on the other side. Beth tucked Albert under her arm and followed suit. 

“Okay,” Beth peeked down. It felt further down than it had looked from the safety of the deck. 

“One,” started Marisol. “Two, Three.”

They jumped into the water. It was warmer than a bath, close to hot tub level, but her body adjusted. Beth helped Albert float but let him go as he doggy paddled towards shore. Her feet could touch the bottom but not without risk of bobbing under the surface. And Marisol was shorter than her.

Beth looked around, not sure where her girlfriend had landed. But there, already halfway to shore were two forearms sticking out of the water, hands holding her phone and painted canvas to the sun. Beth swam after her, enjoying the warm water.

Albert emerged on shore first, happy to pant and wait for them to catch up. Marisol next, coughing up the water she had exchanged for oxygen and the safety of her painting and phone. Beth took her time getting out of the water, even dunking her head a few times, taking out her braid and rinsing her hair for the first time in a week. When she got to shore, feeling cleaner than she had in days, Marisol was holding the canvas at arm’s length. The painting, despite her best efforts, had gotten splashed. The paint blurred and ran in watery lines down the canvas. 

Marisol didn’t speak.

Even Beth knew it was ruined, but she tried to deny it. “You can still fix it?”

“Not without more time.” For once, Marisol sounded less than serene about their imminent fate. She leaned the canvas against one of the wooden posts that lined the dock. 

“No worries. What will be will be,” she said, but her voice was hollow, close to hoarse.

It was clearly not fine, but Beth didn’t know how to comfort herself about the end, let alone the always optimist Marisol. She held her hand, not saying anything more. 

Marisol pressed a kiss to Beth’s jaw before setting her bag of art supplies on the grass next to the canvas, abandoning it. “Let’s go.”

After they skirted the crowds, it wasn’t a long walk to the beach. The dip in the bay had cooled Beth off, but the sun quickly evaporated the water off her clothes and skin, leaving her burnt pink already. Even Marisol’s skin looked rosy on her face and shoulders.

Stray towels, umbrellas, and abandoned golf carts with overly large wheels were scattered everywhere. And there was one of Fire Island’s signature party tents full of shirtless, gay men. Well, half full. These people weren’t trying to get back to the city. The tide was out, exposing tide pools tainted red by the sun, and several people were splashing out in the rust-colored ocean. Music came from both the tent and the group swimming who must have had a waterproof stereo. Or they didn’t care when they died.

They bypassed the tent, walking down the trashed beach until the party music was only a dull throbbing. Grabbed a couple of abandoned beach towels, they laid them in the sand with their own towels in a large square. Beth unleashed Albert who bounded over the dunes on stubby legs, his low belly dragging across the hot sand, splashing where the waves snuck up on the shore.

Marisol lay back on the towels and Beth slipped off her sandals, burning the soles of her feet in the sand. She scrambled onto the square.

“You okay?” Marisol asked, squinting at her.

Beth nodded, lying back. The sun seemed brighter than before. And bigger. An explosion in slow-motion. Everything was still painted dark red. They existed in silence until Marisol started snoring, limbs flailed wide. Beth wondered if the cowboy skeleton app was still counting down. But that wasn’t really what she wanted to check on.

She poked Marisol’s sunburnt bicep. “Can I use your phone?” It was time to call her parents.

“Yeah, here.” Marisol was groggy but quickly conscious. Her phone had fallen out of her pocket onto the towel. She reached for it by her hip. Drew her hand back fast.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s hot.” Marisol covered her hand with the corner of the towel to pick the phone up. She tried pressing the home button. Holding down the power button. She shook it in frustration. “I’m sorry. I think it’s fried.”

“Oh.” Beth waited for her stomach to drop. For the tears to come. Her heart twinged around the edges, but more than anything, she felt relieved. She breathed easier. “Oh.”

“I’m so sorry.” Marisol was leaning over her. “Maybe we can go back – ”

“No,” said Beth. “It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“I’m okay,” she insisted. And she was. She had spent so much energy thinking about the end of the world and how to convince her parents and if she should call. But she couldn’t enjoy anything that way. She had hardly enjoyed the summer with Marisol, had hardly let herself just be in love. She had to let this one thing go, that she couldn’t control. That had been a knot in her heart for so long. Her family would have figured it out by now. But they hadn’t had to suffer the anxiety Beth took on with the long-term belief. She could see her mother at the kitchen window, watching the sky as it cast red light over the dishes in the sink. Her father would draw her outside, hold her hand as they sweat beneath the sky and tried to call their daughter. It was too late. What will be will be. 

Beth smiled up at Marisol, pulled her face down so she could kiss her.

“What was that for?” asked Marisol.

“I just love you.”

They made out, tangled the beach towels, until Albert returned and tried to make them play fetch with a live crab that he’d dug up. It kept snipping at his nose. Beth sat up and tossed the crab back into the waves, wondering as it left her hands if the water was hot enough to boil it. Marisol grabbed the backpack for snacks and water bottles.

“I can’t believe I forgot this.” Marisol pulled out the tube of sunscreen. 

Beth giggled. “That’s the most unnecessary – ”

“Now, we wouldn’t want to get cancer now, would we?” Marisol slathered her own arms and legs and neck with it before holding the sunscreen out to Beth. “I got 50 SPF just for you.”

When Beth didn’t take it, Marisol offered her hand instead. “C’mon, stand up.”

Beth stood. “We’re already – ”

Marisol ignored her. “Now, give me your leg.”

She didn’t move, but Marisol approached anyway – slowly, as though Beth was a deer in the woods ready to run – and applied sunscreen to her calves and knees and thighs. Beth lifted the hem of her dress to let her.

It wasn’t sexy. At least, not on purpose, but Beth suddenly couldn’t breathe again. Marisol dabbed sunscreen on the tops of Beth’s feet so no part of her body would get burned any more. 

“Was that so terrible?” Marisol looked up at her, but Beth knelt down to her level and kissed her again. Marisol’s hand slipped up her spine to the hollow where her neck met her skull, holding the weight of her head. A shiver went through Beth’s body. Marisol held her hand and guided her towards the ocean. It was warm, not boiling as Beth had feared. They swam in their clothes, splashing and playing and touching and

And Beth let go of her thoughts and worries and let herself be loved by Marisol.

The girls spent their last night holding each other, talking, and watching Albert frolic under the changing kaleidoscope sky. It never got completely dark, and the sunlight, shifting through a rainbow spectrum, reflected on the ocean until the tide began to disappear, warm waters evaporating. The colors changed faster as the night went on, almost confused. Is a red sky right? Orange? Yellow? Green? Blue? Violet? Pink? Beth and Marisol witnessed it in wonder. They named new colors that they’d never seen before. They made jokes about the sun’s sexuality.

In the last moments, after they had fallen asleep, drowsy in the heat with Albert slumbering between them, a fiery blue shadow spread across the entire sky. White hot and normal at once. At 7:00 A.M. Eastern time, the sun exploded, vaporizing the earth.

Emma Brousseau earned her MA in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Her work has appeared in The Normal School, Necessary Fiction, Hobart, and elsewhere. She previously studied experimental psychology, which informs the scientific and speculative aspects of her work. You can find her on Twitter @Emma_Brousseau or at emmabrousseau.com.

Kapilioha

Ego

I’m upset that my siblings will never look up to me. And I hate that language refuses to allow it. They may find themselves proud of me, but pride is bestowed rather than admired. I think that I loved to hate him, but my fourth grade teacher did a lot of restorative work in hindsight. I think of him and I hear, “I want to be you when I grow up,” bestowed on me. A gift.

As the oldest I would still be gay, unless the Big Brother Effect applies to fantasies. Maybe then the two of them would explore their own sexualities. Maybe they would sound like, “My older brother taught me how to embrace my own sexuality,” rather than, “I’m proud of Kapili for embracing his sexuality” because pride is bitter, distant, infantilizing even. Pride is an older brother himself. Pride is intangible; I dress like the people I look up to as an effort to embody what I value in their disposition.

Then I question the integrity of this fantasy because, more than once, my brother asked me to outfit him for festival season. But that dressing is also a fantasy. That world is isolated from his everyday.

Pride must’ve played soccer in high school, maybe even college because he was that good. Pride takes the passenger seat in a car with one too many people and he doesn’t ask. And I want to be the older brother because I’m tired of sitting in the middle and I can’t stand when the fuckers lean on me rather than the door. 

Pride flexes his biceps walking past a window or mirror. I stand in the mirror with my older brother and he always appears larger.

Respect is the opposite of Pride. And once, of my older sister who wasn’t at dinner that night, my Mom told me that my sister didn’t need to respect me. It made and makes me question the quality of respect and I ask, is it actually earned? Mom seems to think that, as my mother, she’s earned my respect but who asked to be born? But I think respect is something given and given with the virtue of compassion. Respect is a language. It encourages, “I want to have a relationship with you.” Pride is barely an affirmation and primarily directed downward. Respect is horizontal. They can say I’m proud of you and they can also say that the work you have done has taught me this, this, and that.

They asked, “Should we,” when I suggested they hold hands for a photo. And because they were guys they didn’t. 

Because Pride is definitely straight. As in, heterosexual. Regardless of Pride month.

If I were the older brother my siblings would tell me about their crushes. I would hear something like hope in their voices. 

Maybe if I was the older brother Cole would tell me about a boy he kissed, or Leila a girl. Or maybe they’d question their gender altogether. Either way, those are futures I fail to behold or trust. It’s rather unlikely that they’d try and it feels like a vehement refusal. I question what we’ve been taught and wonder why my parents question my anger. Anger doesn’t speak to Pride. Anger might come from a lack of pride communicated, but mostly a lack of respect felt.

If I were the older brother I wouldn’t be reprimanded for holding someone accountable. In fact, I would be most entrusted with accountability and I would savor it. And maybe I just don’t listen well enough. And maybe I am the problem child. But maybe I’m not respected. And if I were the older brother I would be and it wouldn’t be a question because it would be earned by default; he came first. He gets to sit in the front. And ultimately I wouldn’t be letting go of a role model, I would be letting go of Pride. Pride will cut me as I release him because he has sharp edges. Pride wears armor. My hands will bleed and as I hug my little brother or sister in turn I will leave stains on their backs and I will hug them because I forgive them and I will leave stains because they must always know.

Kapilioha Moniz is queer, Native Hawaiian, and based in Los Angeles. You can trust him with the aux in any passenger seat and he is making his debut with 'Ego' in Passengers Journal. He'll join Saint Mary's College for their MFA in Creative Writing in the Fall of 2022 after a much needed break from anything turbulent in the upcoming year. You can connect with him on Twitter @morekneez.

Melanie Hoffert

This is Not an Argument for Marriage

Our wedding day has been scheduled to the minute. According to our timeline, I should be posing for pictures with my wife-to-be, but I can’t move. I can only stare in the mirror. This dress is all telling, with just enough material gathered around my midsection to hide imperfections. Think Statue of Liberty in white. Think college toga in a tight, one-strap, number. I had hunted for this dress for months. At first, Emily and I had decided to wear all black. I had put my foot down on the idea of white dresses, thinking that traditional wedding dresses would look ridiculous. Then, while shopping, just thinking about wearing a black dress in the heat of August made me sweat, and it occurred to me that a white dress didn’t have to be an actual wedding dress. We could just get something that we’d throw on for a swanky summer party. Emily had landed on a jumper with a halter top from Anthropologie. I chose a simple, floor-length, fitted dress from Macy’s. My dress had been perfect—until now. 

The lesser of my issues is that I clearly—how could this have happened—grabbed the wrong pair of Spanx. Spanx should be an undetectable layer of material working behind the scenes to condense my thighs and stomach. A modern girdle. But due to the construction of this particular pair, it appears as if I am wearing two giant rubber bands around my thighs. My next problem is that there is a dark spot the size of a pea on the front of the dress, though I hadn’t touched the thing since I picked it up from the seamstress. And now, the most alarming problem: My breasts are uneven. Not just a little bit off, but two inches apart horizontally. One breast is like a morning glory, opening toward the sky. The other an anchor, sinking low, ready to be dropped into the ocean. I tug at the cups.

“Honey, what is wrong with your boobs?” Ryan says. He is one half of my gay husbands, the phrase I’ve coined for my dear friends. He is tilting his head, looking into the mirror with me. He summons his partner, the other half. “Montana, come here!” They have been directing my hair and make-up and are now helping me with final preparations. I pull some more, trying to get my chest to sit evenly, but every time I take my hands away, one breast floats up, one down. 

“The cups. She must have sewn them in wrong.” 

“Who?” Ryan asks.

“The seamstress!” I say

“Didn’t you try it on?” Montana asks.

“No. She didn’t tell me I had to.” 

“Sweet baby Jesus,” Ryan says.

“Of course this would happen,” I say. 

At the cusp of 40 years old, I went from a person who was never going to get married—who judged and questioned the institution—to having my engagement announced on National Public Radio. One has to examine the factors that go into this sort of transformation. 

It is not entirely accurate to say marriage had never been on my radar. As a senior in high school I kept a scrapbook, and in the WHERE WILL YOU BE IN 10 YEARS blank, I did not write my career aspirations, the places I might travel, or the books I wanted to write. Instead, I had penned in cursive: Probably married with two kids. And I didn’t mean married to a woman. I had no way at that time to make sense of such a possibility. That was time travel. That was walking on Mars. I meant married to a man. Like dating them, marrying a man would be an outward necessity while I tended to the inner garden of my secret life, where beauty and color and magic sprang from my draw to other women. 

In childhood, there was also a certain familiarity offered by marriage: It meant a quiet prairie where I slept and woke in the care of two parents. It meant Sunday church followed by gravy-soaked dinners and napping, while football droned from the TV.  It meant coming of age on a farm outside of a small town that sat in the shadow of grain elevators and the watchful eyes of a mostly married community. It meant harmony. This was all I knew then, families that mirrored my own. And until I learned to interrogate the flip side of that heteronormativity, I suppose I had accepted that while I’d never fall in love with a man, marriage would provide comfort—and, apparently, two kids.

*

On an April afternoon, years before Emily came into my life, I sat in the back of a Catholic Church, watching as a funeral procession of people I had known for over a decade walked down the center aisle, heads bowed, tissues folded in clasped hands. Ryan and Montana sat with me. Within the group was my partner of many years, N.  

When we first met, I was in my early twenties, just out of college. N was in the process of getting divorced. She carried a manila folder with mounting legal papers and notes. As we got to know each other, she’d open that folder and share the details of her battle. She and her ex slugged it out in the courts, disagreeing over 401Ks and custody arrangements for their daughter. 

Our connection emerged from her struggle to shed the toxic tailings of marriage, contrasted with the exchange between us: Joni Mitchell and cooking and making love and writing letters. As she shared her legal entailments, we critiqued and dismantled this bondage from which she worked to be free. Deeply in love, I believed that our relationship was elevated beyond anything she had experienced with a man, and convention, and marriage. We needed no definition, no contract, no labels. 

As the years wore on, the pattern forged by our relationship matched the blueprints we had laid: we kept separate houses; we often went different ways for holidays; life plans were nebulous, intangible. By design, we eschewed definition, leaving our relationship often shapeless in a world otherwise ruled by language. I thought our connection would be enough, but as almost 16 years wore on, I became invested in the idea that one day, when her daughter left for college, we’d merge our lives, make things easier. When that day eventually came, I realized that wouldn’t be so. 

In college, right before this relationship, I had written a paper about Boston Marriages, arrangements in the nineteenth century between two single women who lived together. These respected coupledoms were thought to be asexual—the bond emotional. Many scholars pointed out that these relationships were, in all likelihood, not platonic. In her book Surpassing the Love of Men Lillian Faderman writes, “But whether or not these relationships had a genital component, the novels and diaries and correspondence of these periods consistently showed romantic friends opening their souls to each other and speaking a language that was in no way different from the language of heterosexual love: They pledged to remain ‘faithful’ forever, to be ‘in each other’s thoughts constantly’ to live together and even die together.”  

I appreciated that their contemporaries considered these relationships between women primary unions, even if not defined by sexuality. As I came to terms with my feelings for other women and the language to describe what that meant, homosexual, I couldn’t wrap my head around why we defined relationships by sex instead of the hundreds of ways we connect when we are in love. Why not homoemotional? Homospiritual. Homointellectual. Sex, I argued in my paper, boiled down to just a fraction of our lived experience with another human. I had, after all, made out with farm boys, the fleeting carnal impulse insignificant compared to the life-altering bond I felt possible. 

Like any good women’s studies minor at a liberal arts college, I also dug into the historical roots of marriage and formulated all of the obvious conclusions: marriage was a tool of commerce and the patriarchy; the equivalent of trading women like livestock.

In a nutshell, this is why, before meeting Emily, I would have said that there is a zero percent chance I would ever marry. If about asked about the other details of our eventual wedding, the odds would have plummeted: 

Will you walk down an aisle? 

No. 

Will you invite 400 people? 

Never. 

Will you marry in rural North Dakota in front of people you’ve known your entire life? 

That...is actually impossible.

Will you wear a white dress? 

You see where this is going.

*

With only weeks left before our wedding, I had yet to my dress fitted. “It’s going to be impossible to get into someone good,” a friend had warned. “But I have a connection.” 

A couple of weeks later, a woman led me through her suburban ranch-style house into a bedroom turned office. I dumped out four boxes of shoes I had picked up on my way, presuming she could help me select the right ones and then hem the dress accordingly. Instead, she stared at me. “See. We don’t have much time.” I looked at the dozens of wedding dresses hanging along the wall. “You can change right here,” she said, taking my dress and putting it on a hook next to me. I fell in line quickly and picked a pair of shoes, sans help. Surprisingly, the dress hung perfectly, just an inch from the ground. I took a bunch of steps, testing how it behaved as I moved. “Looks like you won’t even need the dress hemmed,” she said, circling me. 

“Well, that’s good. So, now, what do I do here?” I said, pointing to my chest. Through the all-telling fabric, it looked like someone had taken a mold of my nipples and plastered them onto the outside of my dress. “What kind of bra should I wear?” 

“A bra is a terrible idea,” she said. “The dress is tight enough to hold everything in place.” 

“Are you sure?” I couldn’t imagine not having a bra. At the same time, I couldn’t imagine how I’d tolerate a strapless one for hours—or how the bra would look under material that showed every line. She went to her desk, grabbed two little pads, came back, pulled out the front of my dress, and pinned the pads into place. The magical little cups transformed everything. My breasts sat in their proper spot. My nipples faded from view. 

“I’ll just sew these in, and you’ll be set,” she said. 

 Because this woman was all-knowing, an expert referred to me by a friend who had taught home economics, I figured that all would be well when a week later, I picked up the dress, and she didn’t insist that I try it on. I felt a little unsettled by the lack of quality assurance but didn’t say anything. After all, people who sew know things I don’t. 

Once I got the dress home, I did not take it out of the bag either. I had been proud of my restraint in avoiding all of the potentially disastrous scenarios, including snags or wine stains. But now I realize the misstep I have made, leaving my fate in the care of a woman who had sewn the cups in at different longitudes with dirty hands, as evidenced by the dark dot.

“Good God woman,” Ryan says, as he pushes the door through to go snatch a pair of Spanx off of an unsuspecting wedding guest. Montana starts to blot the stain. I slide the Spanx down my thighs, only to see my pubic hair protrude like a prickly pear plant through my dress. 

My mind is on repeat: What-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-do-with-lopsided-boobs-in-front of-400-guests?

Is the universe punishing me for years of judging people for getting married? Or is it sending a final warning to not succumb to this convention? Or am I simply the recipient of an alteration gone bad at the worst time possible?

*

When we met, Emily had been living in New Orleans, where she had attended law school. Though we didn't know one another, she and I both hailed from North Dakota, just thirty miles apart. For her thirtieth birthday, Emily’s mom had given her a book that I had written about growing up in our shared homeland. After reading it, Emily had reached out to see if I wanted to grab wine. She was on her way to visit her sister in Minneapolis, where I lived. A week later, I sat face-to-face with an appreciative reader who would later become my wife—an impossible outcome. 

After that night, we got to know each other from afar. Our shared home state, our congruence, our draw to one another led to a romantic relationship. As we contemplated a future together Emily, unlike me, was clear-minded about marriage. A civil rights attorney, she was well versed on the downside of the law, of the imperfections lurking within its artful higher purpose. In her discipline, the law was always evolving. Perhaps this is why she didn’t overthink the historical implications; why, as marriage equality rose upon the horizon, she assumed that if legalized, marriage would be on her life roadmap. She wanted to celebrate with those she loved; she wanted witnesses, a day to mark, a story to tell.

I wanted a life with Emily more than I wanted to hold tight to my academic critiques, yet my years of practiced beliefs and reflex for minimizing my relationships had worn deep grooves. Whenever Emily mentioned marriage, I would recoil as one might avoid shellfish after having an allergic reaction. I would push arguments against the institution, but from her vantage point this was our story, not my past. Ours was history to make, not to repeat. 

I figured I’d have a few years to figure out what marriage meant for this new relationship. I was wrong. Make that months.

*

As I watched N deliver the eulogy, I could have recited the words myself, since the night before we had spent hours working on it. And yet, I could hardly hear her voice through the thin siren that filled my ears. In that back pew, I seemed to shrink, smaller than the roaches that scuttled in the basement, to nothingness. Though her family knew we were together—how could they not—for her to invite me into the procession would have triggered a need for language, definition. 

To occupy a life with someone but have the relationship only partially recognized by others is disembodying. Entire relationships have been buried by centuries, never to be named, still to not be known. 

To be true, the weight of this moment didn’t come down to her actions alone. I had been a co-conspirator in hiding our relationship, and before her, had spent years telling very few people that I dated women. But there was something about that day, to not be included in the family corpus, that split me open in a new way. 

As relatives later poured into her parents’ living room, eating finger food and speaking quietly, I took out my phone and wrote: Save me. I’m not entirely sure who I was writing to or what I even meant. As I reflect now, I wonder if my body knew, before my mind, that like living organisms, relationships cannot survive lack of light.

*

“Melanie Hoffert is engaged,” said David Green to his 1.8 million National Public Radio listeners, only hours after I had learned the news myself.

The day before, I had watched Emily disappear into the airport. An ache always took hold when she left for New Orleans but I knew soon enough, we would find a permanent solution to the endless goodbyes that long-distance dating demanded. 

My friend Bill had texted me while we were on our way to the airport, asking if I could meet him—he needed advice. When I later arrived at the coffee shop, I had expected him to be cozied up to a latte, but I didn’t spot him. “You looking for someone?” the barista had asked, noticing my scanning eyes.

“Yes. I am,” I smiled, continuing to look around.

“Then this might be for you,” she reached out, extending a small case. “You are supposed to take this next door. To the wine bar.” 

I took the case and opened it to see familiar handwriting. Each time Emily and I were at the adjacent wine bar, the place where we had first met, we’d write lists of words on napkins to memorialize our evening. I looked at the barista; she shrugged, her part done. “Alright,” I said, and followed her instructions. 

The wine bar was dark, not even a worker in sight. The bar’s counter had been set with candles, small bites, and other artifacts—none of which I could make out because I walked to the far back corner, my pulse escalating. Though Emily’s fingerprints were clearly all over this, I texted Bill, thinking that perhaps she had him deliver our words as a sweet parting gesture. But why didn’t he stay—and where was he now? 

As I tapped away, Emily walked through the door. 

“Em?” is all I could say. “What the hell…”

She came to me, pulled me from the darkness, and led me to the front, where I had first set eyes on her, just ten months earlier. At the bar she had curated a dining experience for two. Songs we had collected over our months together filled the quiet. She wrapped her arms around me and we danced. This was when I knew a proposal was coming, years ahead of my planned schedule. My already quickened pulse shot up, my breathing all but stopped. My brain became a giant mush of elation and fear. “Will you marry me,” she whispered into my ear. I had much to figure out, much to reconcile, many calcified beliefs to exhume. And yet, there was only one response that found my lips: “Yes.” 

NPR had first contacted me several weeks earlier, when unbeknownst to me, Emily was in the middle of planning the proposal. They wanted to do a story ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage that would explore attitudes in a place that generally had a live and let live attitude; they wanted to talk to people who loved someone gay, but who might be conflicted by tradition and religion; they wanted to tell a story of nuance before the highest court in the land upheld tradition or changed marriage forever. North Dakota, our home state, fit the bill. 

I had not yet discussed same-sex marriage with my family—neither in the abstract or with me as a participant. While I had long-since come, talking about being gay still struck a chord of discomfort. Mine is a farming family. In most situations, the fewer words, the better. 

The leap from not knowing my family’s feelings about same-sex marriage to having a conversation broadcast over the air seemed like a rather large one. And yet, the court’s decision would be consequential, pushing societal inclusion, the lack of which I had suffered from my entire life. The years-long debate, from amendments to block same-sex marriage in the states, to this Supreme Court decision, had become a proxy for me to gauge societal acceptance. Despite my personal feelings about the institution of marriage, and my empathy with queer, anti-establishment voices that warned against hetero-conformity, I believed that marriage, so long as it existed, should be an extended right. To not speak up, if given the opportunity, seemed wrong. So, I said sure. I volunteered my story, my family, and soon after, on a spring day, David Green and his producer pulled up in a rental car on the farm where I grew up. 

 I gave them a tour of the farm—the barn, outhouse buildings, the shop—and then the three of us hopped in with my brother, Donny, who was heading to check a field in his pick-up truck. Donny, the baby in the family turned farmer, tried to act natural while giving me side-eyed glances to acknowledge the strangeness of the giant microphone dangling near his head as we bumped around on a dirt road. 

Later that day, I wanted to crawl under the table when David asked the expected but uncomfortable questions of my family, who had gathered around my parents’ dining room table for dinner. “What did you think when Melanie told you she was gay?” he asked. They all chewed on pizza and looked around. My mom said, “I responded, 'Melanie, you are not.' The reason being, I don't like the word lesbian or gay. I don't know why they have to put a name on something. It seems like a label that I just didn't like." The rest of the conversation boiled down to this: they loved me; they don’t have an issue with me being gay; some thought marriage should be a right; some are still parsing through what it means. 

After the interview, I became sick with worry—as in swollen glands, body-ache sick. I imagined what the activists on both sides would make of the conversation—how the editors would shape hours of recording into who knows what. Why had I subjected my family to scrutiny and online trolls? I had been practiced at keeping my shit to myself, or writing about it for years before releasing it to the world. Radio, by contrast, was fast and public, and the pending exposure overwhelmed me.

Little did I know, as Emily watched me become undone, she was on a countdown to propose exactly one day before the show would air. She couldn’t move the date, as she had already changed her ticket, intervene with my coworkers so I wouldn’t be needed on a work trip that had come up, worked out an agreement with the bar owners, invited our families and Ryan and Montana to a post-engagement celebration, and arranged to have a congratulations message on the marquee of the theater across the road. And so, instead, she told the NPR producers of the serendipitous timing of their story. They stood by, ready to weave in the good news. 

On April 16, 2015, the story aired, “A North Dakota Family Breaks the Silence on Gay Marriage.” Then, just two months later, on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court rendered a decision in Obergefell v. Hodges which made same-sex marriage legal.  

I guess my high school prediction been right.  I would get married, after all.

*

Staring in the mirror in disbelief, I watch as Montana works on the spot, which gradually fades. Ryan then comes flying back into the bathroom with a pair of Spanx he took from my sister. Behind him is my lifelong best friend, Danielle. While I wore Hanes Her Way underwear in high school that came in plastic packages of six, Danielle had already been buying delicate lingerie, hand wrapped in tissue paper from Victoria Secret. Here from Bozeman, Danielle travels with everything she needs—health foods, pillows, vitamins, potions for her skin, and clothing for every occasion. She bursts through the bathroom door with the ferocity of Wonder Woman, holding a strapless bra in the air. “That won’t work!” I scream though I should know better to argue with my friend, a connoisseur of both fine and functional things. “What are you talking about? This will work perfectly,” she says. 

Danielle removes the cups with a stitch ripper, which of course she has. I wrap the bra around my chest; it feels like the most luxurious memory foam bed, modeled into the shape of my body. We pull the dress up over the bra—no lines. My breasts look full, healthy, and, most importantly, are now sitting together at the same axis of the universe—ready to lead me down the aisle.

*

While our engagement came quickly; the actual wedding took some time. Emily first had to make her way to Minneapolis, where we had agreed to live. This move not only brought Emily to me, it brought her closer to her mom, who still lived in North Dakota, just four hours away. 

Emily’s parents had divorced when she was four years old—their third and fourth divorces, respectively. She grew up with her mom and sister in a snug home stuffed with sun-faded Victorian decor; in their carpeted den, they’d have pizza and movie nights where the three, she said, lived like sisters. 

Her mom had worked for the county and had, it turns out, come to my fifth grade classroom to teach us of the dangers of drugs through the Just Say No campaign. An enigmatic woman with sparkling eyeshadow and glamorous thrift store fashion, I never forgot her, and then I grew to adore her as we became family.

On weekends, Emily would settle her mom in an overstuffed chair by the window of our cabin and deliver coffee, newspapers, and chocolate as we listened to waves and music. Over wine, I’d cook dinner for the three of us. A ferocious love between them, they could also enter their own cold war, growing so frustrated that they wouldn’t speak for days. Tenderness and teary eyes always won out in the end. 

And then her mom died. A routine surgery gone wrong. 

If that wasn’t enough, Emily’s dad passed months later. 

During this time, Emily launched a social enterprise. I started my own business. We were in constant motion and mourning, which pushed the wedding date out several times. But then we finally settled on a date, five years from the day we met: August 18, 2018. 

One would imagine that in five years I’d have time to settle my trepidation, but marriage and I continued our klutzy waltz, which didn’t stop until just two days before the wedding. That Thursday we threw a party at our cabin to welcome those who had come from across the globe to celebrate with us. The event, which started out with people lingering stiffly on the front lawn had turned into a proper bash after dusk. Laughter rose, drinks flowed, and our friends leap naked into the lake, turning the shoreline into a sea of floating heads and cocktail glasses. 

I had never been skinny dipping at our cabin; had never even swum at night even. But somehow I found myself naked, full and free, gliding through the silky black water in a state of peace and delight. I glanced at Emily standing on the dock, fire dancing off of her joy-filled face, and right then, I felt a sensation I had never before experienced; a sensation the opposite of standing with the wrong person on the homecoming stage, the prom stage, the date stage. The opposite of an early lifetime answering questions about the suitable men in my life. The opposite of sitting behind the curtains of my own stage, in various relationships. As I now watched Em, lit up by the moon and fire, all resistance ceased. The months and years of mulling marriage over suddenly resolved. I had made room for everyone’s relationships, for everyone’s lives, except mine. The lake seemed to turn into a vat of liquid pride, suspending me. Holding me. 

My ease would be short-lived though. Not twenty minutes later, with a wet head, I found myself sitting in the back of a car. “Good job Mel. Your lesbian wedding may have just killed Grandma,” said my brother, David, sitting next to me in the back seat. He had found me just a bit ago, warming myself by the fire. “We don’t want you to worry,” he had whispered, “but Grandma is in an ambulance on her way to the hospital. They think she’s having a stroke.” Upon getting this news, I had dried off, sobered up, and at almost midnight, my siblings and I were now speeding to meet the rest of my family at the hospital. I jabbed my wise-ass brother, who was only trying to lighten the mood, but also knew that my 89-year-old grandma had just endured a fourteen-hour car ride from Wyoming to be here for me. That sort of journey seemed ripe for a blood clot. 

As we sliced through the black prairie night, Emily was back at the cabin, sobbing. This is how it ends, she presumed. The wedding would be off. After all of my consternation, all of our conversations, life would intervene in the cruelest of ways and take this day from us. Even though I had said yes, Emily always feared my unease. Whether or not she had the exact words for it, she sensed the remapping of wires, of thoughts, of convictions, of beliefs. She sensed a reconciliation of past and present. She sensed me trying on labels, tradition, and standing face to face with my hypocrisy. While she expected, and deserved, my pure, unadulterated, euphoria—for many years, she had to deal with my static. 

I didn’t have a chance to tell her, before we raced off, what had happened in the water, that I had finally shown up; had finally felt worthy.

*

The dirty spot is gone. The new Spanx are hiding and holding everything correctly, including my pubic hairs. My dress is put back together. I am balanced. I am ready. 

Today we are getting married in Wahpeton, North Dakota, in a restored city hall turned brewery, with cathedral windows and exposed brick stretching for what seems miles into the sky. 

I had fought Emily and my mom on the guest list. I couldn’t imagine a big wedding, but everyone is connected and related in a small town. One invite leads to the next; and because my mom and Emily share an inclusion gene, we could leave no one out. 

Emily is waiting for me when I finally emerge, having just taken her own photoshoot. “Where in the world have you been?” she asks. “God. Long story,” I say. 

This, right here, is why it is so easy for weddings to fall into cliché—why it is so easy to judge the pomp and circumstance, because there is no way to avoid sentimentality as I describe what I saw or felt in this moment, accepting the outstretched hand of this woman waiting to claim me and our relationship in the most outward way; or later, when I sat in a small overflow room and watched people line up to enter the building. I saw old teachers and churchgoers and baby sitters and aunts and uncles and distant cousins and county officials and farmers and doctors and Cenex workers. I saw neighbors and classmates and friends from all over the world. Here. For us. 

I saw everyone, that is, except my grandma and Emily’s mom.

*

When we arrived at Grandma’s bedside, I looked into her benevolent eyes; she was at peace but now without language. She would survive—but would not leave the hospital for weeks. 

The last bedside I had occupied had been Emily’s mom’s, whose quaint yellow house is so close, we can see it from our wedding venue. Emily in agony had told me, “She’s not going to live to see us get married.” I assured her that all would be well—that even though her mom’s heart had stopped while having hip surgery, they had brought her back. Certainly she would survive. I had been wrong. 

While I held Grandma’s hand, on the cusp of my never-imagined wedding day, I considered how my grandparents had ordered my early understanding of relationships. They extended kindness, peace, affection, and humor to all of us, but most notably to each other in their over sixty years together. As a child I’d stick my head into the bread drawer at their house, breathing clove, nutmeg and yeast; there was a particular sweetness to that drawer, to their home. I think I was trying to memorize them—to inhale the sort of vivid love they put into the world. 

Emily’s familial scaffolding had been so different from my own; marriage a temporary binding. Her parents’ short-lived union lasted just long enough to provide Emily’s entrance to this world. She grew up bopping between parents, absorbing from her mother an end-of-the-earth sort of love, and from her father practical lessons—make the bed, keep up with the dishes while you cook. In that yellow house she breathed in her own sweetness; memorized her own ideas about love. 

*

When the last person walks up the stairs and through the door, all that is left to do is to study the passing sky while people settle, grab cocktails, and take a seat. I stand up and smooth my dress. Here we are, five years to the day since Emily and I met—and I am ready to find her.  

This is not an argument for marriage. But this is not an argument against it, either.

Melanie Hoffert is the author of Prairie Silence, which won the Minnesota Book Award in Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction. Melanie has been published in several literary journals including the Baltimore Review, New Millennium Writings and Under the Sun, which each selected her work as the recipient of their Creative Non-Fiction Writing Awards. Melanie currently splits her time between her home in Minneapolis and her cabin near Battle Lake, Minnesota where she is finishing a memoir called Water Land. She can be found at: www.melaniehoffert.com, Instagram: @melaniemaxine11, Twitter: @mealniemaxine, and hoffertmelanie@gmail.com.

Siobhan Tebbs

Passengers Journal Prose PRIDE Prize Winner

A Window We Open

I was thinking of the roundness of her lips. Yes the roundness – and the fact that she didn’t give my mouth her tongue at first. Do you want to know more? I am quite sure that you will, because the roundness of her lips is just the start. 

The day I met her at eighteen in a Tokyo hostel, I found a guy who offered me Bacardi and I gave him a blowjob in the fire escape because I wanted her so bad. A decade later she’s gasping as my whole being moulds into the shape of the air in front of her body. 

Sex is just something that we do, a window we open together. But this me and Sarah – this is… The sky is orange on one side and pink on the other, and a fire roaring in my root like everyone I speak to is a long-lost lover. 

I know she remembers my last night in London – some guys hitting on us in the pub. We were not interested in the guys, but in our beers definitely. And when she came for a conference, touching me as always just a little. I was too afraid to ask, you know? I was still eighteen when she was there, trying to temper my desire with the unsaid. 

There is more to tell you about Sarah. There is far too much to tell you about Sarah. We’ll keep talking, she says. It’s been three days and I ask her: do you think it will happen again? She says: I’m only just starting to realise…

I am learning to weather storms and bathe in lagoons when they appear. Maybe her limbs do not curl without good reason. The sex is what we do, and the love – the love happens around that. If we learn to make it so.

Siobhan is a queer poet based in Barcelona, originally from the North of England. Her work has appeared a number of times in Barcelona-based publications Parentheses and Libro rojo, and she can often be found whispering poetry to clients at the Poetry Brothel as her character Sebastian. More at http://siobhantebbs.wordpress.com.