December 1994
Anthony is sunken into the queen-sized mattress pull
ing his knees up to his chin. He clutches at his ankles with
blistered hands. Hands that had built some of the struc
tures that surround the city, but he would never notice.
His palms are thick and brawny. Big blue veins emphasize
the muscles that gloat over his metacarpals. His curved
shoulders cascade into the long arms that are extended
around his balled frame.
She slithers out of the singular bed frame that he had
built years ago and scurries to the left wall of her room.
She closes her small ear to the wall, cupping tiny fingers
around a tuft of yellow hair. Pressing one palm to the par
tition, she spreads those fingers to feel his movement. Her
small sharp shoulder leaned, pressing into the drywall.
Anthony moved for a minute, adjusting his head on
the pillow. He slowly slipped his tongue over his teeth. A
caked film of apathy lived there. Bacteria lived there too,
forming mountains and valleys on each tooth. He hadn’t
brushed them for days. But there he lay, too tired to move.
When he did get up, maybe a year later, his original
unassailable stature was threatened by a mean hunch—
one that found him leaning forward almost crippled. He
couldn’t decide what to eat anymore; his hands looked
small and unwilling to prepare nourishment.
Anthony’s hands looked like someone else’s hands.
Were they his wife’s or his daughter’s? It seemed like the
veins had receded into the same place as his vision, his
cleanliness, and his appetite. It was all a product of the
black hole now.
September 2001
She walked off the big yellow bus and tilted her tiny
chin toward the sun, wondering why the front of it was
so flat. “I guess the bus company forgot to buy fronts,”
she thought and shrugged it off. Forcing her 5 foot frame
up the hill, she walked toward the main entrance to
the grade school. As she pushed through the doors, the
bricked overpass read in big steel letters, “Brookside El
ementary.”
He staggered onto a bus that he had never seen before.
On the first step he looked up and saw nothing but blue
grey, an expanse of sky that “would always imprison the
bottom-dwellers,” he thought. He looked through the driv
er as the last bit of change in his pocket slipped through
smooth fingers and into the coin control box. “You gave
me too much, man!” hollered the bus driver in his native
Long Island inflection.
She slung her plain lunchbox over the desk, staring at the
white dust on the chalkboard. She smiled as she listened
to the gummy yelps of the static that filled the classroom.
He unobtrusively slumped into a seat in the far back.
The bus sped on and its fumes carried up and into the fog
of the day—slithering through a crack in the window and
filling his crusted nostrils. He slid his body around to face
the window to his right. Pulling his knees up to the tip of
his nose, he looked out.
She worked through her first least favorite periods, Math
and Science. “Who cares about the inside of a lima bean?”
she thought to herself. “I eat lima beans!” she exclaimed
2
to her best friend, Kristin.
For one minute, Anthony’s vacant brown eyes jolted
from right to left taking in the rapidity of the bus’ motion.
And then, naturally, they settled back into the abyss. Back
through the outer lens, following the optic nerve behind
his complacent eyes, something interesting happened. A
surge of liquid sadness pulsed, coursing through a part of
his forebrain.
But doctors could never tell if this condition, his condi
tion, was simply due to high levels of a chemical called
corticotrophin. If too much was ever found, the chemical
could’ve been what increased his stress levels.
His eyes were now outlined with bags of purple skin,
sagging to the very tops of his cheekbones. Anthony’s
coarse dark hair looked manic and frayed, like the end of
an old rope. A product of not washing, no doubt.
February 2003
She ran her hands through her darkening yellow hair.
Straight. It was so straight compared to Kristin’s. So flat.
She reached across her desk to grab one of Kristin’s curls
and pulled the strand of hair all the way out—straight
ening its appearance. Kristin giggled as the girl released
the curl from her clutch. “Boing!” the girl yelped while the
strand bounced back. She carefully watched the curl coil
like a snake back into Kristin’s frizzy crown.
Anthony stepped off of a bus and trudged up to the re
quested job site. Looking up at an invisible structure, he
pulled his smooth hands up and over his sunken eyes
squinting from the sunlight. “Hmm back to building,” he
thought.
June 2004
She pushed open the heavy French doors and looked
directly up at the sun. Her long brown hair felt warm in its
light. Wearing only a sheer yellow dress, the girl walked
delicately over the new patio—one that her godfather
had paid people to build. Stepping off of the woodwork,
she forced her toes into the dewy lawn. Each blade of
grass itched a little as it hung over her slender feet. With
muddy toes, she swayed to the swing set that was struc
tured on the plane of the hilly yard. Grabbing the frayed
rope on either side of her, she sat lightly in the swing that
was always her’s.
Anthony hammered at rusted nails as the sun hid be
hind dark grey clouds. It was cold in June. “Why is it cold
in June?” he thought, shirtless and shivering. His shoul
ders sharp; bones looking as if they pierce out of his
bronzed skin. His stomach is sunken, much like his chest.
As he lifts his hands up above his now yellowed hair, they
clutch the hammer with sinewy strength. Veins popping
and forearms flexing, Anthony forces each nail into the
pure wood.
The girl presses her feet back into the mud and pushes
off, moving the swing back and forth. She laughs at how
innocent it feels to do this.
He then looks up, wondering why he is working alone
in this weather. Beads of sweat dripped off of his few
frizzed strands of hair. He leaves his project for the mo
ment, trudging to the open frame on the east side of the
structure. Looking up again, his head feels light, his eyes
roll back, and he falls from the frame.
When she gets to a reasonable height—up past the top of
the swing set, the girl forces her body off. Sailing through
mid-air, she reaches the earth with a loud “thump!” and
somersaults into a sitting position. “This is where I’m
from,” she revels looking around. Standing up, the girl
brushed bits of dust off of her dress and wondered why
anyone would want to leave this.

Olivia Marcinka
2013