The song grew louder as the days passed. It was always there, whispering at the edges of her awareness. Eve started to hear it in places it couldn’t possibly be: on the static-laden intercom of the subway, in the shuffle of leaves on the sidewalk, in the way her coffee pot gurgled in the morning.

Her sleep suffered. At night, the melody would wrap itself around her dreams, leaving her groggy and irritable. She began snapping at friends, avoiding phone calls, retreating into herself.

Then the dreams changed. She started seeing flashes of a shadowy figure, always distant but unmistakably there—a man in an old, frayed suit, his face obscured by the haze of her dream. And always, the melody followed him like a shroud.

Eve couldn’t take it anymore.

Eve didn’t know when the song first appeared in her life. It felt as though it had always been there, a ghostly hum threading through her days. It wasn’t a tune she recognized—no pop song from the radio, no childhood lullaby. Just a strange, mournful melody that clung to her like fog on a winter morning.

At first, she thought it was in her head. She’d hear it in the quiet moments, like when she was brushing her teeth or walking home from work. A low, lilting refrain that made the hairs on her neck rise. She hummed it absentmindedly one day, and her coworker frowned.

“What is that?” he asked.

Eve froze. “You can hear it?”

He nodded. “Yeah, you’ve been humming it all week. It’s… kind of eerie.”

She laughed it off, but her stomach tightened. She hadn’t realized she was humming it. Worse, she couldn’t remember how she’d learned it.

There’s a joke that ends with — huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is — afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough light to drown in

but never enough to enter the bones

& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy

broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry

anymore. So I ran. I ran into the night.

The night: my shadow growing

toward my father

Always that spectral fragment. Filament of line cast back there. Where open-mouthed fish rise to gulp down shiny lures.   I sang once in an auditorium to almost empty rows. I looked for my people in the seats, under the seats, behind

the seats, but they weren’t there. I called the three people who were there to come up and introduce themselves.

They were young aspirants. A They talked about themselves their professional websites. They talked about their astronomical aspirations. What they didn’t talk about is why.   Maajaa. Time collapses everything. Origami people. We’re all eventually blown away into uncertainty.   Azhegiiwe. Is that how you say it? It’s that too. We all return, if only by the stars.   For a while we thought we could change the world. For a while we thought we had a place in the world.   The offers came. Good ones. Corner offices. Security. Mortgages. Investments. Cars. Boats. Houses. Memberships to health clubs, fan clubs. Promotion. Seduction. Reduction. Fame. Fame. Fame. He says, business is business. She says, look at me. I say, it was planned and bound to happen.   Together we held the thrashing fish in our hands and felt the world slip.

In the dim light of their cramped studio apartment, Mia tossed a crumpled paper at the wall, missing the trash bin by inches. Alex, sprawled across the worn-out sofa, barely glanced up from their phone.

"I don't think about that," Mia mumbled, more to herself than to Alex, as she contemplated the looming deadline of her art project.

"You don't think about anything," Alex retorted without missing a beat, their eyes still glued to the screen.

The words hung heavy in the air, a testament to the

At first there's no lake in the city, at first there are only

elevators, at first there are only constricting office desks;

there are small apartments and hamburger joints and

unpaid telephone bills. Then a few nightclubs appear and

eventually the lake disinters. At times there's a highway

and a car and friends in a snowstorm heading nowhere but

back to the city and Sarah Vaughan is singing in the cabin

of the car. The three of us are frightened of everything.

Our lives in this town, which is not a town, and on this

snow road, which is no road, who will protect us. In the

city there is no simple love or simple fidelity, the poem

long after concludes. There's a slippery heart that abandons.

Fists are full of women's bodies. The Group of Seven is

painting just outside the city now. The graffiti crew is here

inside blowing up the expressway and the city is like a

Romare Bearden or a Basquiat. More Basquiat. The cynical

clerk notes, in her cynical English, all the author has elided,

the diagonal animosities and tiers of citizenship. The

author wants a cosmopolitan city. Nothing wrong with

that. But the clerk who orbits her skull has to deal with all

the animus.

 The author's not naive, far from it, but however compli-

cated she is, the clerk is more so. The clerk notices there are

air raids, a lingua of sirens and gunshots in the barracking

suburbs, the incendiary boys are rounded up by incendiary

boys and babies are falling from fifteen-storey buildings

into the shrubbery; each condo fights for the view of the

exhumed lake, until the sky is cloudy with their shadow.

The atmosphere is dull with petulant cars. The author

avoids all this; you see my point?

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow Rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of Roses

And a thousand fragrant posies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of Myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty Lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and Ivy buds,

With Coral clasps and Amber studs:

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The Shepherds’ Swains shall dance and sing

For thy delight each May-morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me, and be my love.

Once upon a time in the quirky town of Whimsyville, there lived a young inventor named Oliver Widget. Oliver was known for his peculiar gadgets and gizmos that often left the townsfolk scratching their heads in bewilderment. One sunny afternoon, Oliver stumbled upon a mysterious antique pocket watch at the local flea market. Little did he know, this wasn't an ordinary timepiece.

As soon as Oliver touched the watch, a sudden jolt of energy surged through his body, and a voice echoed in his head, saying, "Your time is up. Better run!" The town square transformed into a whimsical wonderland, and Oliver found himself chased by a mischievous group of animated clocks, each one ticking louder and faster than the next.

Panicking, Oliver sprinted through the streets of Whimsyville, narrowly avoiding collisions with bumbling townsfolk who were equally puzzled by the sudden chaos. As he weaved through the peculiar landscape, Oliver realized that the only way to escape this temporal turmoil was to solve a series of riddles that the mischievous clocks threw at him.

The first clock, a wise grandfather clock, hollered, "What has keys but can't open locks?" Oliver furrowed his brows, but with a quick-witted smile, he shouted, "A piano!" The clock let out a chime of approval, and Oliver dashed ahead.

The second challenge came from a playful cuckoo clock, "I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have no body, but I come alive with wind. What am I?" Without missing a beat, Oliver shouted, "An echo!" The cuckoo clock clapped its tiny wooden hands, and Oliver pressed on.

As the challenges continued, the town transformed around him, from gardens of floating tulips to rivers of rainbow-colored lemonade. Finally, after solving the last riddle posed by a peculiar hourglass, Oliver reached the town center, where the antique pocket watch awaited.

With a triumphant grin, Oliver held up the watch and declared, "I've cracked your riddles! What's the deal with this time-twisting adventure?" The mischievous voice chuckled and revealed that the pocket watch was a magical time-traveling device created by the town's eccentric wizard centuries ago.

The wizard, having been entertained by Oliver's cleverness, granted him a wish. Oliver thought for a moment and wished for endless inspiration to create even more fantastic inventions. With a shimmer, the pocket watch transformed into a dazzling pendant, and Oliver returned to the ordinary Whimsyville, where the townsfolk, oblivious to the adventure that had just unfolded, continued with their whimsical lives.

And so, with his newfound creativity, Oliver Widget continued to craft the most peculiar gadgets Whimsyville had ever seen, making the town an even more enchanting place for generations to come.