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“Rona and Frank” by J. Edward Kruft

June 28, 2019June 10, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

Rona with her red hair and Frank with his dark bushy eyebrows met in high school. Rona was good with math and sang in the show choir; Frank was second string in basketball and had a small role in Arsenic and Old Lace. After graduation they married at city hall and Rona got a job as a checker at the A&P; Frank worked at his uncle’s carwash on 21^st Street; they could both walk to work from their studio apartment on 36^th Avenue. When Rona got pregnant Frank worked double shifts in order to save up. When she lost the baby in the fourth month Frank continued to work constantly although Rona couldn’t understand why and felt abandoned in her grief. For his efforts his uncle promoted Frank to assistant manager which meant he no longer went home with prune hands and the extra money got them a one bedroom on Steinway Street. When Rona got pregnant again Frank was right to suspect the baby wasn’t his and through screams and sobs Rona admitted she didn’t love the other man who was a fellow checker but who made her feel she mattered. Frank stayed with his brother for a time and then told Rona that if she quit her job and never saw the guy again and never told another living soul, they could raise the baby as though it was theirs together. They named the boy Francis Carl and called him Franky and by the time he was walking at nine months people commented how much he looked and acted like Frank. Rebecca was born two years later and was named for Rona’s mother who died after a long illness less than a week after Rona delivered by C-section. Frank held his wife’s arm as they walked slowly from the family car to the graveside at New Calvary, Rona feeling the pull of the stitches with each step. Rebecca made both Rona and Frank feel a general completeness. While Rona raised the kids and volunteered at school and balanced the checkbook and gave blood and made birthday cakes and Christmas cookies and sometimes still sneaked a cigarette after the kids were in bed, Frank opened his own carwash in Lynbrook which is where they now also lived. By third grade Rona and Frank had been told repeatedly by teachers that Franky was gifted and far exceeded his peers even though he was often sick and missed school, and he would go on to skip the sixth and ninth grades. Somewhere along the line because of his keen intellect and his lesser constitution Rona felt obligated to tell Franky the Truth and swore him to the same secrecy she had sworn to his father. Franky was upset but also understood what his father had sacrificed and why his father would never be as close to him as to Rebecca. Rebecca bragged of her brother’s successes and never felt the lesser for being merely average for she was still Daddy’s little girl and she loved that more than anything. And Frank still loved Rona and Rona did her best to still love Frank and for her fortieth birthday Frank bought her a Cadillac and when she said it was too extravagant Frank told her it would also cover their upcoming twenty-second anniversary, which would turn out to be a lie because for that he gave her a trip to Hawaii, and Rona’s red hair was now mostly bottled and Frank’s bushy eyebrows grew ever bushier and grey. And after Franky graduated from Princeton and Rebecca was commuting to NYU Franky told his parents and his sister all together that he was gay and Rebecca winked and said she’d always known and Frank sat stoic in his recliner and Rona ran out back and smoked, not caring if anyone saw. And then Rona and Frank were alone again and Frank started voting republican at least at the local level and Rona began donating blood every week and they didn’t see much of Rebecca who was dating an older man from Scarsdale and saw even less of Franky who was living downtown and then at the age of twenty-seven died, and Frank and Rebecca and everyone at the funeral knew or suspected the truth but Rona chose to believe it was one of the many little illnesses that had plagued him since childhood that had finally bested her little boy. Rona and Frank sold the house and moved back to Queens, to a one bedroom garden co-op where Rona planted verbena and creeping thyme and tended to her Mister Lincoln roses and Frank liked to lie in his hammock and read his Raymond Chandler books or let Rebecca’s girls Frankie and Yvette chase him around the old magnolia. They went on cruises and Frank sold the carwashes and Rona taught him to play two-handed pinochle which he became very good at and they brought back high school like the time Frank swiped the ugliest tie from Woolworth’s to give it to his history teacher as a joke, only to have the teacher die soon after and his widow wanted Frank to know she had buried him in it. They found things again to laugh about and watched reruns together and then Rona started sleeping late and getting headaches and then it was almost like it had been one long run-on sentence that was now about to end and Frank asked Rebecca and her husband to leave the room and he crawled into the hospital bed with Rona and took the oxygen tube from her nose and pressed his lips tight to hers and then pulled away by only inches and said what seemed to be the only words to have ever mattered and the only thing to have ever mattered:

“I love you I love you I love you….”

—

J. Edward Kruft received his MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College. He is a Best Short Fictions nominee, and his stories have appeared in several journals, including Soft Cartel and Typehouse Literary Magazine. He loves fried zucchini blossoms and wishes they were available year-round. He lives with his husband, Mike, and their adopted Siberian Husky, Sasha, in Queens, NY and Sullivan County, NY. His recent fiction can be found on his Web site: www.jedwardkruft.com

he can be followed on twitter: @jedwardkruft.

“Reunion/Rebellion/Refusal” by Kai Edward Warmoth

June 26, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

Mother, throw out your black pearls
and smudged the rain will make them.
Their shine become like our shine
under the dirt and hooves of anabasis
where we are the sodden and soiled;
balanced scales.
New wardrobes that convert office lighting
to pure vitamin MDMA
and new costumes
so that we may ritually beg for treats,
guised as the Imago Dei.
These are what Mother will bring
from the conference
in another state.
It’s all the same State.
Gathering now around that oak stand in
the kitchen. What ever was it for?
Here grandfather would act
as if memory reserves seats.
“We shall weigh sod and we shall weigh soil.”
Iron wrought scales know fuck all of anything
but the presupposition of balance.
Order? That comes
through the bark of a dog on
the television.
A hunter-gatherer picks at
Marlboroberries and he gives little heed
to black pearls,
partly obscured in the ashy loam,
smudges left from the oil of a Thumb.
Leave it to the police;
they have a database for this
type of shit.

—

Kai Edward Warmoth lives in central Indiana where he patiently awaits being cancelled or Waco’d, whatever comes first.

“Mermaid by the New Moon” by Rick White

June 24, 2019May 1, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

The operation went well. No reason why it shouldn’t have, it was all routine stuff. But the sight of you in your hospital bed still freaks me out.

The morphine has hit you pretty hard and when you come round you say some weird stuff about a nurse with no teeth – I haven’t seen her anywhere.

In the bed, wearing your hospital gown, you look tiny. Except for your long blonde hair which is wild like always, spread right across the pillow and cascading down over your shoulders.

For some reason I think you look like a mermaid who’s been brought to shore but cannot possibly survive.

‘Take her back, she needs to go back to the sea!’ I want to shout at the non-existent, toothless nurse.

I’m used to you communicating without words. So I know that the little point you’re doing means you want a sip of your ice-water. I hold the straw to your lips while you take a drink, then you whisper, ‘thank you’ before slipping back down into the warm, gooey morphine.

It’s almost time for me to leave. Visiting hours are over and it’s dark outside, you need to sleep.

I start to think about my Granny – Granny Eileen. She had a million different superstitions that she always swore by and I always think of them whenever I’m praying for someone to be safe.

‘If you’re ever bitten by a dog – you need to put the dog’s hair on the bite or it won’t heal.’ That’s the one that always comes to mind because it took me years to realise that is actually where the expression, ‘Hair of the dog that bit you.’ comes from. Or maybe it isn’t, maybe that one really is just a metaphor for drinking alcohol and Granny made the mistake of taking it literally.

Why, having been bitten by a dog, would anyone then want to chase the dog and attempt to shave it?

Nevertheless my Uncle swears blind that this actually did happen. As a child he was bitten by the neighbour’s dog and sure enough, Granny Eileen went round, shaved some of the dog’s hair and sellotaped it on to my Uncle’s wound.

If that was true I’m sure he would’ve ended up with tetanus or something but I can picture my Granny in the hospital assuring the doctors that this was absolutely the right course of action to take.

A nurse comes in to your room and dims the light, that is my cue to leave.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up.’ I say. But I’m not sure if you hear me, you’re fast asleep, mermaid hair overflowing. Condensation trickles down the glass of ice-water on your bedside table. I hope that you can reach it if you need it.

When I step outside the hospital the cold air takes my breath away.

Suddenly I’m on a motorway bridge, the one we had to cross if we ever wanted to go to the shops when we were kids. Granny Eileen took us one night, a night just like this one and she stopped dead in her tracks as though something had startled her. Then she took out her purse.

‘If it’s a new moon, you must always turn your money over.’

She took some silver coins from her purse and handed them to me, told me to put them in my pocket and then turn them over. I think that one’s supposed to make your money grow, although it never did.

I think of it now though, standing in the freezing cold hospital night, beneath the starlight and the pale glow of the new moon. I thumb a couple of twenty pence pieces in the pocket of my jeans, turn them over once or twice.

As my breath plumes like ghosts in the air, I hope I’ve made just a little bit of luck.

And if my mermaid needs to find her way back to the sea tonight, I hope it’ll carry her safely there.

—

“where the good sod dies” by Lance Milham

June 21, 2019May 17, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

my father spoke from a grin
behind a muffincrumb beard
about his backswing and traffic lights
and whatever-whoever-said-to-who-cares
while I peeled grains of sleep from my eyes,
but then I noticed a freckle
a thumbwidth above his ear
that his hair used to hide:
a tight brown circle
like the eighteenth green,
of an abandoned course,
the sod withering silently, defeated,
like the rest of the golfer must be

—
Lance Milham is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Soft Cartel, Pinkley Press, Aurore, and the late Anti-Heroin Chic.

“Connecting Passengers” by Neil Clark

June 21, 2019May 20, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

I’m sitting in an airport departure lounge, opposite a person in red.

The person in red gets up and heads to their gate, accidentally leaving their phone on their seat.

Whoever is on the next seat notices and picks the phone up. They run after the person in red, leaving their own bag on their seat.

A thief appears. Picks the bag up. Runs away with it.

Someone sees this and starts chasing the bag thief, leaving their own belongings on their seat.

Another thief comes along. They pick the left belongings up. They start running.

An onlooker gives chase, leaving their stuff on the seat, which gets swiped by another thief, who gets chased by someone else who leaves their things, which get lifted. The lifter gets chased. The chaser, robbed. The robber, chased…

I turn to look out the window and see planes taking off and landing every few minutes, departing for and arriving from destinations all around the world.

I think about the planet spinning while it orbits the sun.

I accept my fate. The person in red will come full circle and they will give chase to me, on this trip or the next.

—

Neil Clark is a writer from Edinburgh. For money, he works in an airport, where he witnesses stranger things than the above on a daily basis. Find him and his tweet-sized micro fictions on Twitter @NeilRClark, and visit neilclarkwrites.wordpress.com for a full list of publications.

“The Insomnia Notes” By Dylan Angell

June 19, 2019May 17, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

The reason for my insomnia tonight:

I have always felt strongly about playing a game of my own invention. Blind stubbornness. It is the artist game. This thirsting for work bit is doing me no good. It scrambles my brain and sucks my energy.

The brain is firing off with worry that I will be competing for dishwashing jobs for decades to come. Even at this phase of adulthood the ends still cease to meet. Sometimes I feel like I am my own imaginary friend. I am unsure if the previous moment, day or year even happened because I keep returning to this job hustle that remains ambivalent to the creative life that I have worked to harness.

The impulses by which I have been guided have always felt like the responsible moves even when common thought might say otherwise. Is stubbornness simultaneously my best and worst trait? Am I delusional to say that everything that I am does not define me?

There is a Twilight Zone episode titled Nightmare at 20,000 feet. A man is on an airplane and he sees a strange creature standing on the wing. He tries to alert the other passengers of the creature but no one else can see it. The man is eventually restrained and the plane makes an emergency landing so the man can be removed. As he is taken away in a straightjacket everyone can see that the wing is shredded with claw marks.

On most days, I feel that people see me as being the man pointing out of the window while I see myself as being the creature on the wing.

Not too long ago my mom was driving me to the airport. My flight was very early and it was still dark. We were riding in silence when my mother said to me:

“I saw a David Bowie interview a few years ago and he said that he often shape-shifted because we are living 7 simultaneous lives at all times. He said we have to be patient and let each of our different selves take turns. Eventually, over a lifetime, each will surface.”

Years ago after dropping out of college I backpacked across Europe. I slept outside and went days without speaking to anyone. Some days I would read my horoscope and I would see things like“ there may be drama at the office today” or “beware of gossip amongst friends.” I had quit my job and there was an ocean between myself and everyone I knew.

I was no longer the person that my horoscope thought I was.

I keep waking up at 4 a.m. This morning I couldn’t get back to sleep so I began to read articles about how 4 a.m. is referred to (by some) as the enlightenment hour. It is said that if you wake up at 4 a.m. then you should lie in bed and clear your mind so you don’t miss whatever messages are being sent to you.

Ingmar Bergman made a movie where 4 a.m. is referred to as “The Hour of the Wolf” (also the title of the film.) In the film, ghosts and spirits emerge and move freely because it is the hour where most of the living world is sleeping and the dead can move about unseen.

Those whom I have shared a bed with have often observed that I am the last to go to sleep and the first to wake up. Maybe I have failed repeatedly to receive the information I have been sent and my insomnia will continue until I finally learn to listen to what these invisible forces want to tell me.

If one is meant to be more attuned but remain half asleep then how am I to know if the information I was sent hasn’t been subliminally delivered? How do I know if the ghost have delivered their mail?

******************************************************************************

The reason for my insomnia tonight: I had a drink last night with my friend who works in a psych ward.

She told me how she has been overseeing the case of a hasidic teen who had recently suffered a psychotic break. The case had been frustrating for her because his family and the hasidic community have been refusing to provide any context about the boy’s behaviors. They just want him fixed.

The boy talked freely but the staff were unsure if they should trust him. Everything he said seems grandiose and distorted. He so clearly enjoyed the attention of being questioned that it seemed he might say anything.

After a few days in the psych ward he began to ask my friend questions about prison. What is it like inside? Does everyone get raped? What would he have to say for the doctors to call the police? What if he confessed to a murder? What if he had molested a kid? What if he said he was a serial rapist?

She answered professionally while taking note of each proposed crime.

The next day she was at home and the hospital called. The boy had confessed to molesting multiple children in his community, including his younger siblings and cousins. The police were called.

His parents are now saying that they had known about his actions for some time. His mother had banned him from being alone with other children but she recently had seen him walk out of his younger sister’s room wearing only a towel.

After that incident she told him to see the Rabbi. The Rabbi told him to simply stop molesting children and everyone had assumed that was the end of that.

My friend suspects that the reason that the family had refused to participate in the case is because pedophilia is running rampant in the hasidic community and that they didn’t think that his actions deserved any special attention.

She suspects he got himself institutionalized because he feared his compulsion and he has wanted it all to stop.

He had tried to confess but no one listened.

******************************************************************************

The reason for my insomnia tonight: I have always felt strongly about playing a game of my own invention. Blind stubbornness.

I work now in an office. For the first time this winter I have steady income and I am miserable. I have never felt so disengaged with my own life. I wake up at 5:30 a.m. and I take a shower. By 6 a.m. I am drinking coffee and attempting to write. Most of what I have written has been scrapped, because it is not interesting.

For the past 5 months I have worked on this project where I write these small pieces that are reflections of my day to day. I don’t want to write about the office because I am not interested in the office but for 40 hours each week I am at the office.

The office is my life and I am not interested in the office and the office is my life and I am not interested in my life.

By 7 a.m. I am biking to work. On my second day I got pulled over by a cop because I rode my bicycle through a red light. No one was walking, driving or even thinking of using the cross street. I stood by the cop car in the cold, february morning light while this NYPD cop ran my expired NC state ID through his car ID machine.

He handed me a piece a paper and I gave him a staredown of brotherly betrayal. I biked on to work, knowing that whatever I made that day in the office would not be going towards the crater sized potholes I was avoiding falling into. The money would pay for some facial recognition instrument that the NYPD is testing for the next wave of protests.

Once I am in the office I am type A. I am a professional email answerer. I schedule other people’s lives and I collect receipts. I put things in folders and I answer phones. I sit, I sit, I sit, I sit, I sit. Very soon I will be a blind hunchback. This all feels very unhealthy.

I feel my body is as bored as I am. My legs say run. My eyes say look away. My mind is tired of these straight lines. The rest of me just doesn’t care. I don’t care. I hate not caring. I have some 80 years here. That’s nothing. I can’t afford to be bored. I can afford to be broke. I am saving up to be broke. I am breaking. This job is breaking me. Broke.

I work until 4 and then I bike home. After my first day at the job I directed traffic so people wouldn’t run over a man who was laying in the road and bleeding from the head.

I try not to be so selfish that I treat other people’s tragedies as premonitions for my own life. The fact of the matter is that during my first two work commutes my path was obstructed by either blood or money. That’s all I am going to say about that.

I go running after work because I need to remind myself that I have a heartbeat. I need to remind myself that I can zig zag all over the neighborhood. I blast free jazz or ambient music into my ears. No straight lines on my own time.

After I get home. I make dinner. I then try to write but my mind is fried. I am the diet soda version of myself. I don’t recognize myself in my own life though the landscape is mostly the same. But money!

$$$$$! DO IT FOR THE MONEY$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ ******************************************************************************

******************************************************************************

I often created games for getting to sleep. I did not count sheep or clouds. Instead I could be eased by imagining machines shutting down. I imagined whole office buildings as their lights turned off one by one, the white noise of sleeping radio stations and families of balloons all growing limp and slowly lowering themselves to the ground.

******************************************************************************

—

Dylan Angell is a North Carolinian who is currently based in Queens, New York. In 2016 he released the book, An Index of Strangers Whom I Will Never Forget A-Z, via his Basic Battles Books imprint. He has collaborated on two books with photographer Erin Taylor Kennedy; 2017’s I’ll Just Keep On Dreaming And Being The Way I Am and 2018’s Beyond the Colosseum. He has been published in Fanzine, Fluland, Parhelion, The Travelin’ Appalachians Revue and Sleaze Magazine. Sometimes when he can’t sleep he will ride his bike and listen to Bill Evans.

3 Poems by Jenna Vélez

June 17, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio Press1 Comment

pan rabbit and wine

here the doors screen you before you can come in
sometimes children skin their knees
on the blacktop fresh like raven sap
there was always grass that never let you whistle
but danced if you liked

if you listen hard enough
you hear the summer congregation of fireflies
like ember fairies in the blueberry sky

drive faster and no deer can touch you
out here where the woods are more familiar
than the city of unfounded freedom
ringing in your popped ears like corn blues

creeks flowing with the brook trout traffic
backed up like route bluer than her valley forge eyes

here is where i fell in love with the trees
that poisoned you before they let you climb them
and the bliss that smelled like pine forest winters
lake eerie with the sound of war-torn ghosts
and a bethlehem jesus never knew

♦◊♦

ode to a minnesota summer

there’s an ease about a maiden summer
not yet ripe or swamp-skinned
the southern humidity not yet
rising to meet pennsylvanian woods
where the heat glues the trees together
glues the people together

but there is a soft and gentle breeze that carries
buddy holly on a radio and sweet sun tea
it whistles with your hair like blades of grass
and whispers in my mother’s childhood songs

it doesn’t know the bees are awake from their sleep
and the dragonflies meet us for dreamy peach cobbler sunsets
while mosquitoes hum through the thick muggy air of twilight
this is mozart’s unfinished cricket and cicada symphony
warm, static cling skin and vibrating ceaselessly
but for now we enjoy the breeze
that carried dandelion wishes and kitchen clanging
on its winged back
beckoning the lake to cool us off

♦◊♦

will-o’-the-wisp

i see a woman with hips like the wind
and half moon eyes
she is a sway branch, hair like willow
she calls and comforts and cries
she says my name like a curse
like a love song
like a blessing
like a eulogy

i walk to her
barefoot and ghostly
nightgown and night sounds
i sit down before her feet unseen
hovering over the dewy earth
i weep and throw up and beg
for protection, for peace

she carries me back to bed
nothing but a song to move me
and the room gets bluer and bluer
and the air is gone, not a breath to be gasped
by the morning i awake
and sing with her
a mourning song

—

Jenna Velez is an emerging Latinx poet from suburban Philly. She lives with an absurdly large tea collection and her anxious 3am thoughts. She currently runs “The Northern Bruja’s Grimoire” column with Pussy Magic and “By Death, She Lives” blog with Rhythm & Bones Press. She tweets @northernbruja and can be found at jennavelez.weebly.com.

“Taxidermy the Rich” by Alan Good

June 16, 2019June 14, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

This rich fucker hit on top of us. I’ll give him some credit because we was a good two hundred thirty yards from the tee and he hit a ball down the middle of the fairway that bounced about twenty feet short of where we was standing and would have rolled another thirty, forty yards if I hadn’t knocked it down. Jess said we should let him play through, it wasn’t worth starting anything. “Play through my ass,” I said, and she goes, “That don’t even make sense. Just let him play through.”

All I’d wanted was a quick nine but this guy had to turn up. Fucker had on these white shorts that seemed to be swallowing a salmon polo shirt. Looked like an albino python trying to choke down a yuppie. After the country club got ripped up by that F-4 the collared-shirt crowd took over the pleb course with the express intent of reminding us that golf is their game. These country club boys didn’t like the way we played. Didn’t like the way we looked, our trucker hats and cutoff shirts. They wanted to install a dress code. Always in a goddamn hurry. What’s the point of living in Oklahoma if you can’t take a minute to finish your beer before lining up your putt? They was always on our asses, making snotty comments when they played through. They all had brand-name clubs and woods with heads as big as their egos.

I’d been fixing to let his ass play through but his breach of etiquette shot my good intentions straight to shit. Another day, I might’ve just stared him down and played on after I made my point, but I was wound tight. I’d only come out to get my muscles moving, get some of that negative energy out, clear my head of all the stress that was being heaped on me by rich fuckers just like him. Jess wanted to let it go, but it was her he was hitting on top of; some guys still didn’t like to see women on the course, thought they couldn’t play, and in spite of all their superficial gentlemanly ways they’d ride their ass and make demeaning jokes and treat them like second-class citizens, even Jess, who could drive a ball farther than me.

He weren’t him but he looked just like that developer, the motherfucker that wanted to turn my farm into a gated community. Private security. Manicured yards. Cloned homes. A heated private “community” pool. A clubhouse. All these fucking libertarians think taxation is slavery and true liberty is only found in HOA fees. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to sprint the two-and-a-thirds football fields that lay between us. I would hold my club up like a warrior leading his army into battle and bring it down on his skull and twist the staff around his neck. But I had no army. No one could make a fucking living farming anymore and I was the last holdout. I wanted to rip his heart out through his mouth. I wanted to drag him over to Formaldehyde Frank’s place. Frank did taxidermy in his garage and I’d let him stuff the rich fucker and then I’d take him home and mount him at the end of the driveway, a scarecrow for when the developer comes back around.

I started toward him, raised my club and half-lunged, but I stopped myself. If I killed that rich fucker then the other rich fuckers would win. I’d get the death penalty and they’d get my farm.

I tossed my pitching wedge in the grass and pulled out my 5-wood.

Jess goes “Hey, what the fuck?”

I picked up the rich fucker’s ball. A Top Flight that no one had ever had to dig out of a water hazard. I whacked it back at him. I’m pretty wild off the tee but I’m normally pretty straight with the 5-wood. This one I hooked further to the left than Che Guevara. I put a little too much into it. I don’t know if he was scared, or if he just had enough sense not to push me, but he just flipped me off and trotted into the next fairway to hunt his ball and Jess and I played on. Jess beat my ass. Fucker had me rattled and I finished seven-over.

—

Alan Good is a writer and an editor at Malarkey Books.

“In Maintenance” by Rick White

June 14, 2019May 1, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

One of the most horribly unpleasant things about getting older (and bear in mind I’m not that old) is that you start picking up injuries that don’t properly heal. Whether it’s the result of a significant past trauma, or just life’s general wear and tear, you start to find yourself living with pain that you realise will never go away.

I’ve got a pain in my ass – quite literally. It was about seven years ago in January, on a long train journey, when I noticed that my tailbone was really hurting. I went to the doctor about it, he had a good rummage around the ‘area’ (unsurprisingly) doctors are mainly perverts. And then he said, ‘did you go out drinking over Christmas?’

‘Of course. I was celebrating the birth of our lord Jesus, as is tradition.’

‘Did you fall over on your arse?’

‘Well I can’t be sure but I would say it’s highly likely.’

‘I think you’ve probably broken your coccyx without realising it.’

‘I see and what is the treatment?’

‘Nothing you can do. It may not fully get better either, these things can stay with you for life.’

‘Oh.’ I replied. ‘Shit.’ So far it hasn’t gone away.

I’ve had many injuries in my life, especially when I was younger. As a kid I broke my wrist three times, each time trying to copy something which my younger and far more physically adroit brother had successfully carried off. One was on a rope-swing, one on a motorbike and one on a mountain bike. On each occasion my brother swung, skidded and pirouetted elegantly to safety whereas I smacked the deck hard and ended up in the infirmary.

Very recently – twenty and a bit years later – I started noticing a nagging pain in my right wrist, the one I had previously broken. It started getting a bit sore when I was driving, it felt awkward putting pressure on it when I was getting out of bed in the morning.

I realised there was really something up with it after I played tennis and my wrist was so fucked I couldn’t cut through a pizza with a chef’s knife.

So I decided to go to the doctors (perverts, naturally) because at least they can supply you with drugs. This kind of injury though has certain connotations and it was always going to be a slightly awkward conversation, especially with a doctor who looks like he’s only just out of school.

‘So Mr. White, sore wrist on the dominant hand is it? I see this sort of thing a lot. Can I ask, are you currently single?’

‘Well as flattered as I am by your attentions I must tell you that I am in fact married.’

‘Ah, even worse.’

‘What are you driving at you scurrilous student oik? Are you even qualified to practice medicine?’

‘I think this is likely to be some sort of repetitive strain injury if you follow me?’

‘No – what exactly are you insinuating?’

‘It’s wankers cramp.’

‘How dare you! I can assure you sir, that I have never in my life resorted to onanism. I’m not some sort of deranged chimpanzee!’

‘Very well Mr. White, whatever you say.’

‘I demand a full battery of tests. Extract every available fluid from me at once for analysis. Wait…that came out wrong.’

Begrudgingly, that doctor did actually carry out some blood tests in order to check for rheumatoid arthritis which came back negative but did show that my iron levels were through the fucking roof. I was told that this was most likely an indication of Haemochromatosis which I thought sounded horrendous, although amazing for scrabble.

‘Could it be something else?’ I enquired.

‘No. Haemochromatosis is literally just iron overload. So it’s that.’

‘I see. And what are the most common symptoms?’

‘Lethargy and fatigue, joint pain….and erectile dysfunction.’

‘How dare you sir! I can assure you that never in my life have I failed to perform, well I mean, maybe once or twice but still HOW DARE YOU!? I’ll prove it to you right this minute. Wait, wait…’

I wasn’t falling into that trap! No sir. I definitely did have haemochromatosis though, there was no doubt about that. The treatment is very simple, you get a pint of blood drained out of you on a regular basis.

Haemochromatosis is a genetic disorder which means that you naturally absorb too much iron from anything you consume. Over time the iron builds up in your system and starts to deposit itself in your vital organs, fucking them up royally in the process. It usually goes undiagnosed for a long time so the first you know about it is when you start getting all sorts of weird symptoms like the ones that pervert mentioned to me but by then it’s too late as your organs are already shredded.

So it was a good job they (or rather I) had caught it early. Iron takes a long time to build up in your blood, so you drain some of your blood and make new blood, that blood is relatively iron free so it dilutes the iron that’s already in your blood. Nice and easy.

For the next four months I had a pint of my delicious, iron-rich blood drained off once a week until I was well and truly anaemic and looked like a white walker. My iron levels were now back within normal range though so I am now ‘In Maintenance’ which means I get a check up every six months and in the meantime I just donate blood like any normal person and that sorts me out.

Incidentally – last time I went to give blood, the nurse informed me that my blood contains a specific antigen (or something like that) which means that they only give my blood to babies of 28 days or younger. So, I’m actually kind of a baby-saving superhero. Quite a neat way for the Universe to put my stupid sore wrist in to perspective

I’ll have to live with haemochromatosis for the rest of my life but as long as I’m in maintenance then I shouldn’t develop any of the symptoms as long as it’s kept under control.

After all this though, my wrist is still completely buggered. I went to see a specialist about it and he told me, in a very disinterested manner, that the bones are out of whack and it needs surgery. One of the bones wants chopping, filing down and then stapling back on. It would mean six weeks in a cast, three months (at least) of physio and there’s only about a 50% chance that it would improve. There’s a good chance it would remain exactly the same but it could actually make it worse so Fuck. That.

It’s only a sore wrist; but it’s a nagging, constant pain that I will just have to live with. Plus it means I can never play tennis again, something which I previously enjoyed and was good at. Feels odd to completely lose the ability to do something due to the unexpected failure of a minor body part. But that – my Dad assures me – is a major part of growing older. ‘Wait until you’re 65.’ He tells me. ‘You’ll need a team of physicians 24/7.’

It was during this same conversation that I told my Dad about the haemochromatosis and his was response was typically, brilliantly, Dad-ish;

‘Well you get that from your mother not from me.’

‘Well I get it from both of you actually, it’s genetic.’

‘No. I’ve been tested for all genetic disorders.’

‘Right well it’s a recessive gene which means that both parents have to have it in order to pass it on so if you’re interested in keeping up this line of defence it can only end with the logical conclusion that you are not my father.’

‘Well who told you that?’

‘A doctor, and the internet.’

‘They’re all perverts mate.’

I meant to tell my brother about this as well because he should really get tested but he won’t have it. He’ll be fine. He got all the good genes from my parents, that’s why he’s got pecs, an eight-pack and 0% body fat. It’s also slightly to do with the fact that he works out like a motherfucker and sticks to a healthy diet but still, it’s bloody unfair.

I inherited haemochromatosis and my mother’s legs.

I’ve always thought my hips were a bit weird. They’re jut out quite a bit and they seem a bit too wide. ‘Child-bearing hips’ you might almost describe them as. Growing up I was incredibly self conscious about it as my body seemed the wrong shape, my torso was not very masculine. I’ve got long, skinny legs like my mum, sticky-outy hips and a ring of stubborn fat around the middle. To me, my body looks like a toad being dangled by its head.

The hips, it turns out, are a problem. About a year ago I started noticing a sharp pain right in my groin. It was always there when I was doing any sort of movement and always in the exact same place. I tried physio, two different women and one man have fettled with my groin for a prolonged period of time. Perverts? Sure. Enjoyable? A bit. Completely ineffective though, as I knew it would be.

I have a hip spur; an extra bit of bone that grows on the ball of the hip joint and then bashes in to the soft tissue within the joint whenever you move. I had keyhole surgery to remove it, but the tissue within the joint is damaged and cannot be repaired with keyhole surgery. So the pain is still there, in exactly the same spot. The hip seizes up very badly after long periods of sitting down, especially after driving, which also hurts my ass, and wrist.

I’ve seen a specialist and – quelle surprise – it needs a full surgery. They would need to chop my leg off completely, rummage around in my hip joint, then staple the leg back on. Long recovery, lots of physio, 50% chance it will work. FUCK. THAT.

The doc was concerned about both of my hips and said it’s highly likely that I will need early replacement surgery on both of them. Could be ten years, could be twenty, but they’ll need to come out.

And in the meantime I will just have to live with the pain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s mild to moderate. It’s not ruining my quality of life that much and it’s nothing compared to what other people have to deal with. I struggle to run though, which does bother me.

I don’t like the idea that if I have kids one day I might not be able to run around with them.

I can do other stuff though of course. I can ride a bike, I can swim, I can box. Boxing doesn’t actually hurt my wrist at all and it’s now something I do regularly. I do it mainly for fitness, I’m amazing at hitting the pads but I find it considerably harder when someone is trying to hit me back.

I train regularly at the gym, I lift weights, not just to try and improve my appearance although vanity is obviously a factor. Mainly I just want to make sure that I can stay relatively fit and strong. I may not win the Dads 100 metres at Sports Day but if do have kids I want to be able to pick ‘em up and swing ‘em round by the legs for my own amusement. And I want to be able to beat up at least one other dad in the playground, should the need ever arise.

If I’m honest, I hate my body. I know that these days you’re supposed to love every inch of yourself and be body positive no matter what but it’s just not that easy. It’s not just that I hate the way it looks, it’s more that I feel it is constantly conspiring against me, trying to stop me at every turn. These little aches, pains and niggles are not too serious but they add up. They take a toll and start weighing on your body, but more importantly on your mind. At 35 I sometimes feel as though I’m already too old to have kids, like I won’t be able to find the energy that’s required.

But then I think, maybe I’m just trying way too hard, putting too much pressure on myself. I go to the gym because I know that I’ve only got a few years left of being able to call myself ‘young’, so I want to try and make the most of that. I spent my teens and my twenties being completely sedentary and filling myself with all kinds of junk, just like most people do. But I missed out on the pleasures of actually being fit and healthy. Now that I want to enjoy those aspects of life, I feel as though I’ve not got much time left to really fulfill them.

In a few years I will realistically be ‘middle-aged’ and that’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of the inevitable signs of ageing will start to appear on me and I shouldn’t have to fight them too hard. It’s far more dignified, cooler even, to accept these things as natural consequences of a life that has been lived, rather than to keep battling non-stop against them, to the detriment of everything else.

My wife isn’t bothered about me going to the gym, I think she’d probably prefer it if I didn’t. She was first attracted to me because I had, in her words, ‘a funny face’. She also tells me that she ‘likes her men fat.’ So I know there’s no pressure from her, only what I put on myself.

As I get older I’ll continue to do everything I can but I’ll try not to overdo it. And I will make a conscious effort to be happier with myself. Hopefully I will start to move away from trying to cut away and drain all of the things I don’t like, and more towards taking good care of what I have. For me, that is what it means to be ‘In Maintenance’ and if you think about it, it’s not a bad strategy to apply to most aspects of life.

P.S – My mother-in-law is a natural worrier and was very concerned when she read about the symptoms of haemochromatosis online. Thankfully my wife assured her that I was not exhibiting any of the symptoms (most of the time). She also told me that there is a Haemochromatosis Society so I will definitely be running for president of that in 20/21. I’m sure it’s not exactly the Bullingdon Club but I’ll give it a go.

If you’re reading this and you happen to be American, the Bullingdon Club is pretty much exactly what you’ll imagine a British fraternity to be like.

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“The Ghost in The Closet” by Declan Cross

June 12, 2019May 1, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

It’s only midnight, so I probably won’t get to sleep for another few hours. I never do, especially on week nights, there’s just too many thoughts to be had. Thoughts about whether or not I will be fired tomorrow. Thoughts about whether one of the people on Tinder will message me so I can use that meaningless conversation to feel less anti-social. Thoughts about what that intermittent thumping coming from the other side of my room. Most of the thoughts keeping me up are about the first two. If something is going to burst out from the shadows and kill me, that would not be the worst thing in the world. Death doesn’t scare me but filing for unemployment and admitting to myself that I am lonely does.

So, I just stare at the ceiling and think my little thoughts and wait for sleep or the creature in my closet to take me. I don’t have a preference as to which comes first, so long as it comes quickly. But, after a while, the incessant knocking is getting on my nerves. It’s been going on for a half an hour, just a knock every couple of minutes. Exasperated by this being’s unwillingness to come and introduce itself, I get up out of bed and pad across the room in my underwear to flick on the light. Nothing noteworthy jumps out at me as my eyes adjust and I scan the room, but one more thump comes from the far wall.

I walk to the closet and fling it open without a second thought. Before me stands two racks of clothes and a pale being floating a foot off the ground. It looks mostly human, except with translucent skin and legs that turn into wisps of ethereal light instead of feet. It also looks a lot like me. Which is upsetting for two reasons. One is that I do not really like how I look, especially in the light of this spectral being. The second reason is because I now realize this phantom is not here to kill me. I would never trust anything that looks like me to take my life. It stares into my eyes, knowingly. I walk back to the bed and lay down. I look up to the closet, where the specter floats, still staring into my eyes. I rest my head on the pillow and fall asleep swiftly.

I wake up to the sound of my second alarm. I never remember waking up to turn off my first alarm, but it always happens. I get up and stumble to the bathroom, eyes blinking away the red spots in the early morning brightness. Halfway through washing my hands I rush out of the bathroom without even turning off the taps. I come to a stop in the middle of my room, staring into the eyes of the ghost, now sitting on the edge of my bed. Its eyes stare right back.

After three minutes frozen to the floor, I slowly start reaching for my phone, intending to take a picture to prove that my brain has not simply started augmenting reality. The ghost reaches out its own arm, stopping mine just short of the phone on the other pillow, the one without a dent from my head. It cocks its head and smiles kindly, before getting up and leaving the room. I turn and follow it to the kitchen, leaving my phone where it is on the bed.

The phantom gestures towards the fridge and then to the pantry. I prepare two bowls of cereal and two glasses of juice, before hurriedly scarfing down my shares. I had not realized how hungry I was until the ghost insinuated it. The ghost does not touch its food but stares maternally as I fill my empty stomach. It then motions for me to follow back to the bedroom, where I presume it is time to get ready for work. I walk over the closet where the ghost used to preside and reach for a dress shirt and tie. Once again, the spectral hand reaches out and stops me. The faint glow that is the head tilts to the side as the eyes stare. I instead grab my comfiest cardigan, the t-shirt with the cartoon Martian on it, and a pair of ripped jeans that would get me fired on their own. After I’m dressed, the ghost starts heading for the door to the apartment. I grab my cigarettes and my journal with the crab on it and follow, head swimming with curiosity as to where we will go.

I follow the spectre to the forest, not far from where I live. Pedestrians ignore the both of us, walking through my new friend and looking as though they wished they could walk through me. The ghost leads me down a trail to a bench, along the way I notice it glancing at the little signs under all the trees, telling us their genus and species. I had never noticed there were little signs there and follow the ghosts’ gaze to read them all.

Abies Balsamea

Carya Ovata

Acer Saccharum Var. Nigrum

Tree branches wave in the wind as we pass, moving further along the trail. We pass dogs and I smile as they walk by. The dogs look up at the ghost and give it a friendly blink while their owners just keep moving, wondering why their dogs look at the sky in that way. We finally come to a bench, seated comfortably in the shade of two overarching Amelanchier Laevis’. The ghost gestures to the journal and I open it up.

I sit there writing for most of the day, while the ghost glances around calmly at the surrounding forest. It is alive with sound. I work in the alterations of tree names as names of my characters; Abi, Cary, Sacha, and Amelia. As the sun begins to get low along with the temperature, the ghost smiles and stands. We walk along the path back towards my home. The ghost again gestures to my fridge and pantry when we get there. I fill my belly once more and fall asleep not an hour later.

When I wake up the next morning, the first alarm has already been turned off, but the second is yet to ring out. I push back the covers on my bed, take off the t-shirt with the Martian on it, throw it in the hamper, and go to open the closet. On the floor sits my journal with the crab on it, a half-smoked packet of cigarettes, and a leaf from Acer Saccharum Var. Nigrum.

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