The only person who’s got your back is you.

FROM HUMBLE EYES BY SALEM ROSE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 94

Salem Rose, you can’t trust any motherfucker. You can talk with people, and be cool with them, but people are ruthless and disgusting, and the only person who’s got your back is you. Nobody got you like you got yourself, Salem Rose. You have to take care of yourself and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.  “I know dad,” I would tell him, giggling because I knew he would get mad at me if I swore.

I liked her laugh.

WITH JENNY IN THE VAN BY JAMES ROBERTOVICH MARTIN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 94

I liked her laugh. I wanted the van ride to go on forever. 

She answered the coyote’s call.

STILL LIFE WITH COYOTE BY MARTHA BRENCKLE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 94

Her back yard butted up against a nature preserve, a swampy place that had yet to wholly emerge from the Mesozoic era. When Annabelle sat on the back steps in the gathering dusk with only the sounds of insects, an occasional sharp bird call, and the ice settling in her glass of water, she could almost believe she lived in a post-apocalyptic world.

We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet.

MCSORLEY’S BY PHYLLIS VAN SLYCK 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 94

I think about how these New Yorkers, Irish New Yorkers perhaps, know how to have fun in the old-fashioned way, not at their phones but together laughing, shouting, singing.

Do you know where your parents are?

DO YOU KNOW? BY MICHELLE M TOKARCZYK 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 94

In 1977 my 60-something parents became wanderers, driving a battered car around the United States.

The poignancy of stillness.