Published on Substack on August 2, 2026

My suspicions were one thing. This person I knew very little about caused something very sharp to turn within me. There was also my curiosity. A natural thing that often rendered me into a bit of, albeit harmless, trouble. I didn’t, however, have foresight. No one does, really. We have instinct and learned patterns proven over time by repetition and equation. But miracles do still happen, out of the blue, when we least expect it. Not that I’d describe him as a miracle. He was more of a monsoon and eventually, like all wretched forecasts, he passed.
…
The night I met him was in the third consecutive month of what we called, ‘the summer of tears.’ The city was suffering from a hydro-phenomenon where it rained more days than it did not. The common high-season exodus became comical. The streets were empty and extremely wet. I was having the opposite problem. I hadn’t cried in almost nine months, not since the morning after my mother’s funeral. I threw myself down on the floor of her living room, surrounded by boxes filled with her life, and sobbed so hard I knocked myself out. I woke up hours later on the floor and hadn’t cried since. When this rain first began, I scavenged my apartment to find a pair of old, knee-high rain boots that she used to wear and had given to me when I first moved away. I thought the sight of them would evoke a tear, even a glistening. No, I didn’t feel anything. I only heard, in the distant echo chamber of my mind, her yelping as she jumped into a dirty puddle and my six year old laughter joining in communion.

In the office break room, I changed out of my flats and into the rain boots. I liked to walk home from work and clear my mind. And think of her. I wouldn’t let the rain stop me, so I fished out these boots and they became a part of my routine; a normal, twenty-five year old’s routine. Walk home, pour a tall glass of wine, fall asleep, repeat.

It was only misting when I headed out that evening and I was grateful to put away the umbrella, letting the mix of sweat and mist cool my exposed skin. I liked the calmness of the quiet streets and how it would slow down my thoughts. Slow them down enough to notice little things that, for some reason, always made me think of her sitting with a cup of tea or of Bath in autumn. I noticed children’s chalk melting off the sidewalk or the loneliness of an unoccupied park bench. However, the evening weather had other plans. Suddenly, wind whipped across my face and swooped behind my knees. Mist turned into droplets then into clashing streams and I began to run. I had just moved to a new neighborhood–in Manhattan, finally–and I navigated my way as best and as efficiently as I could toward First Avenue, chasing dry spots made from scaffolding and awnings.

Under one awning, I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. I stood in a puddle of neon, a pool of magenta reflecting off the sign sizzling in the window. As I was about to launch myself into the storm, I heard the faint echo of my mom’s favorite roadtrip song. I thought it was from inside my mind again. I cupped my eyes to the glass window to peer in and saw a long mahogany bar top, an equal length backsplash mirror behind it, and black and white tiled floors that led back to a rusty juke box blasting Blondie. Before I could think much further, I was stood inside, dripping onto the tile floors.

I sat for one beer and then the bartender gave me another on the house, so I was a little buzzed. I think the bartender could tell I was sad, which I hated, but endured for the free drink. I hadn’t noticed him until he started howling laughter. Two bar stools over from me, his tall torso was hunched over a book on the bar and his shoulders shook with hiccupy laughter. I looked up into the backsplash mirror that stretched across the bar from end to end. Through its reflection I caught his face and noticed right away that he was beautiful. Not in a model way. He looked youthful without looking young. I think it was the little crackling lines around his eyes and the pink of his cheeks as he sat there laughing like that. It made me do something I rarely did. I said something.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, directing the question toward the mirror. He looked up, catching my eyes in the reflection, through stenciled cursive writing that read, ‘Champagne by the glass.’ His chuckling subsided, but his smile lingered. I could feel the warmth grow in my cheeks, but I didn’t look away. His eyebrows raised a little as he spoke, a sigh in resignation.

“Well, after reading 227 pages of this damn book I have just decided to stop reading it. Can’t do it. Too boring. So I’m laughing at myself. At defeat, I guess.”

I nodded, “What book?” He flipped it closed and slid it across the bar toward me. Crime and Punishment.

“You’ll be fine without this one.” I slid it back. He looked even more defeated.

“Of course you’ve read it. It’s a necessary evil. Get through the muck to experience the glory of saying Mhm I’m a classically-trained douchebag.” I laughed this time, just as I was taking the last sip of my beer which dribbled down my chin a little. Nice, real smooth.

“That wasn’t the goal of reading it. Just a lucky side effect, I guess.” I grabbed for my wallet and placed a ten dollar bill by my empty glass. “Grab a copy of Sense and Sensibility on your way home instead,” I added.

As I stepped off my bar stool, I finally glanced at him straight on and felt the thing. That thing that makes time stop, that becomes the source of great sonnets, that compels us to forget all logic and every lesson.

“Have a good one,” I offered up with a smile, stuffing out the thing before it had a chance to burn, and made my way toward the door, toward the storm.

“Wait.” He was fully facing me when I turned around. “Have a good what? A good night? A good life?” Before I could answer, he offered back, “How about one more round? This time, we’ll make it a good one.”

Published on Substack on July 31, 2026

‘Take one pill daily by mouth,’ I read from the tangerine tube. In my palm lay a miniature lime green oval, a mossy boulder resting on the landscape of my life lines. When I shift my hand a bit, the pill teeters and flips over. It looks like a singular, chalky rainbow sprinkle that didn’t make it onto the sugar cone. I didn’t pass another exam and now I’m staring at a sprinkle-sized cure. Their cyber-mail said, ‘We unfortunately will have to move forward with other applicants.’ They desperately need help with their grammar. It seems unfortunate for them to be moving forward without me, not the other way around. I clicked reply-all and typed out this rebuttal before backspacing entirely.

A cure is an inaccurate connotation. It’s more of an experiment with highly likely outcomes. Everyone’s taking one these days. Distribution centers are practically running dry before renewal orders reach the plants and production begins again. I hear stories that seem to bring peace of mind to my peers. Stories about new levels of divinity. Stories about clarity greater than the waters of Crystal Lake. Stories about dosages that reach thrice-killion metagrams, and I shutter. I do need new outcomes.

The word rejektyous is rooted from the old English word rejection and the even older Latin word reicere, meaning ‘to throw back.’ I like to study these things because each word has layers of meaning. Sure, there’s the tone, the tense, but there’s also the past, the history of a word and all that it carries with it. Today, we say, as it said at the beginning of that cyber-mail, rejektyous and we mean ‘to be one without that way.’ I stare at the pill in my hand thinking of this history. I wonder if this pill will rejekt me too, and what that might mean for my highly desired outcomes.

I too have a story, a history that’s kept me from calling up the distribution center and ordering a tube until now. Fine, I’ll admit. I am afraid of this darling, little pill. Worse yet, I am petrified of staying the same. I can’t have it both ways. I close my eyes and I think of Crystal Lake. I think of the jumper fish that breach the smooth surface, catching sun on their turquoise gills, happily surviving along until an elder with an ancient rod snatches one of them up. The fish flips and teeters and shimmers violently before it gets thrown back in. Reicere, it seems. Not big enough, meaty enough, quite as sparkling as one might’ve dreamt up, or simply not right. But back in it goes, thrown back, where it has the chance to swim again.

It’s a matter of time before I exhaust all options or try my hand at every exam in existence. But fuck, I guess I’d rather that. I’d rather try and swim again. I toss my head back and drop the pill. It dissolves on my tongue before I have a chance to wash it down.

Translated from Millennium-English into Old English.

Published on Substack on July 14, 2026

It’s one of those days when the air hangs quiet, not stirring much. The city and I are out of sync this season. All the petals are opening in anticipation of the sun and I feel like I’ve yet to thaw. Pollen, airborne and invisible, rests everywhere, on every construction railing, in the underpasses, on the edge of my nose. I sneeze all the way down, down below the earth, past the putrid puddle, across the station to my line.

My line and I are more in sync, I suppose. It hosts a constant crazy carnival of characters that I could complain about, but I did buy the ticket. I read somewhere to stay open. I’m single because I’m not open enough, they said. Be open everywhere, on your commute, in your spaces, in your soul. I read somewhere else that the city always leaves you open to danger. Keep your eyes to the ground. I think of my soul there on the platform as a door. I put my headphones in. I’ll leave her ajar. This time, no music. My thoughts are loud enough. 

I stand here, on this platform, five days a week. Although, I am not here. I am shin deep in the Mediterranean shore, somewhere behind me a clock ticks just past 5:45 am, I hold a shot of espresso in a glass atop my book like a tray, and I watch the sun peak its scalp above the rippling horizon. The water is so dark in the glow it is purple. I imagine as I stand there day after day that my body is capable of unknown cosmic powers. Maybe I invent the secret to time travel or to life in that very station. I melt into the crusty tiles covered in discarded gum and I wash upon a foreign, faraway shore.

My train is seven minutes late. On the platform across from my line, I survey the characters. A stout woman with a childlike face fidgets above her metal two-wheeled cart filled to the brim with grocery bags. A man almost as tall as the overhanging signs hops on one foot back and forth between the staircase and the trash can, wearing only one shoe on the opposite, elevated foot. A pack of fanny-packed mothers gossip in thick texan accents while at least ten pudgy tweens shriek over their phones in pairs and trios. A rally cry sounds from the happy hour captain that wears his suit like a vinyl jersey and pumps the shoulders of one of his exhausted mates. A man in a blue suit, tailored to perfection around his broad shoulders, with auburn hair and a tan jawline almost glowing beneath the fluorescent lights stares back at me.

His eyes perk up, darts hit the bullseye. His smile stretches slightly as if he’s reaching out to me. I look away immediately. Certainly not me? Isn’t that what they say? Or I say? Do I say that? Look to one side, the other side, then back. Still there. He has a good one. It’s one of those smiles I want to touch with my fingertips. He smiles like he’d let me. I smile, reaching out in return. And his eyes squint like he’s laughing, like he’s reminisced about this moment a million times before. He is one of those statues in the low-fi hallways of the Louvre, with waves of cloth and iron shields carved smoothly into stone, holding his briefcase beside him like a token of wisdom or war. It’s just a briefcase, though. I look down at my toes wiggling beneath the leather of my ballet flats. Every inch of me unknowing how to take this gaze. Is it a gaze? Is it a hello? Is it an opening? The station begins to rumble.

My train still reads ‘3 min’. It must be his. From afar his platform begins to disappear behind a roaring sliver bullet, the slicing dagger of fate. I look back once more, catching his face fully with my minds eye, before he’s devoured wholly by the train. Only then do I look down and realize my hand is raised in a wave goodbye.

The train pulls forward and the carnival is clear. The platform sits still as the Spring day, waiting for new feet to hop and hope upon it. It really can be a small hope that’ll get me through the day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be on this platform again but this time on a mountaintop in a blizzard drinking a beer and holding a telescope to the northern lights. For now, I’ll allow myself to lament with my music. I begin to rummage through my bag for my phone and jump at the gentle shoulder tap. He stands before me with his constellation smile close enough for me to reach out and touch. He says something that my noise cancellation muffles. I pull out one of the headphones and shake my head in awe.

It’s you, I beam. 

What are you listening to? He beckons.

Oh. Nothing, it was just quiet.

He points at the phone now in my hand. May I?

I unlock it and watch as this stranger taps his way to my playlists like he’s done it before. He pokes around and presses play. 

This is what you looked like. From across there. He points at the opposite platform. You look just like this song to me. 

The air hangs between us—suddenly, finally—stirring.