January 2026 | nonfiction
If You Were There
If you were there, you surely would have noticed the scarlet slash cleaving the soft brown fuzz. Her roly-poly-curved shrunken shape. White sheets, once crisp, now softened by sweat. Darkened room illuminated regularly for blood draws, IV exchanges.
You would have heard her on the phone. Do you have avocados? Maybe bring one of those. And toast? Black beans too, those might work. Oh, a wheat tortilla and some grilled chicken. I can make a little taco. Maybe a bite of that will stay down. Ice cream, too, please, sometimes that’s okay. Something cold to drink – maybe Pepsi? No, Sprite.
Then, turning to me, “Can you believe it? My mom and sisters took my daughter. They were supposed to pick up pizza, bring it back here to eat with me. That would have been nice, right? They just texted that they are coming later, after they’ve finished eating. Why couldn’t they just eat here with me? Now I’m starving, and it may be too late to be able to hold anything down. That’s not nice of them, is it?”
You would have witnessed a woman arriving with a stack of cards. “You’ve got lots to do, Sis. I planned for all the birthdays, the graduations, even their weddings.” Maybe you would have recognized appropriation disguised as altruism.
You likely would have noted the numbers scattered throughout her questions. Will I be here 2 months from now? Can you believe the nurses have to wear gowns and gloves to hand me this 1 little pill? What should I tell my 3 children? Do you think they realize I may only have 14 days to live?
You never would have noticed:
A scar, mollified by years, a kind of cleavage under my blouse
Me alone in the bed, my family out for burgers
Suppressed shame that I was unable to write letters to my kids like the dying mom on Oprah
The newspaper clipping shared by a friend – a grief camp for kids with dead parents
My own numbers: 2 weeks to live; 12 previous cases, all diagnosed by autopsy; 3 major surgeries and dozens of procedures; 25 bonus years
An infant son learning to walk in my hospital room
His younger sister, not even arrived by that hospital room but present for all the following ones with the new scars and new guilt and new hope and new joy
You may have noticed me grab her hand, look into her eyes, whisper, “I’m here.”
Amy Agape
Amy Agape, PhD, provides spiritual companionship to hospitalized individuals and their families. This work, rooted in her own experience with a rare illness, invites her to listen deeply to others’ stories and explore the ways they interweave with her own. Amy dreams of a world where all people experience the profound blessing of being companioned with loving presence. She intends to spend the remainder of her days helping to create that world.
January 2026 | nonfiction
Diapers
In rural northern Illinois northwest of Chicago, a raised, pressed, gray gravel path, long ago a railroad track, runs straight for miles, bordered by trees. On one side, farmers harvest their cornfields, green John Deere combines and tractors stirring up more dust than smoke from a forest fire. On the other side, houses on two-acre lots show off manicured, landscaped backyards with two and three-story mansions with castle-like turrets and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Walking through this shadowy tunnel one day, I meet Blackjack, a 14-year-old deaf, half-blind black lab. The man walking him, Mike, looks like Hemingway in his later, Ketchum years. He tells me he is a retired contractor.
I am strolling our family’s miniature poodle, a dog rescued when ten-years-old, now lying wrapped in blankets in a baby carriage because, at 18, partially deaf and mostly blind, she no longer walks.
Like aging men do, we start talking general aches—physical and familial—and how we handle them, then graduate to specific body parts. I brag two replaced hips, he a prostate.
“The friends of mine who had them taken out all wear diapers today,” Mike says, his voice low, gravelly. “Me, I got nuclear implants. They put in radioactive seeds that kill the cancer. They said I had eight years. That was back in 1998, more’n twenty years ago.”
Before surgery, Mike asked his doctor, “Will I still be able to get it up?”
“I’m not a miracle-worker,” his oncologist answered. “Can you get it up now?”
I tell him when eight or nine-years-old, I had to tap twice with the first two fingers of my left hand each light pole passed when walking to my elementary school on Dearborn Place or else something horrific beyond imagining would befall me.
I never missed touching one. Maybe I was afraid each would collapse if not tapped.
After one or two more serendipitous meetings, I no longer met Mike and Blackjack. Then Summer died. Occasionally I walked the Great Western Trail thinking I’d run into Mike, most likely alone. I looked forward to seeing him. After many strolls, no sign of him or his dog, I pretty much stopped walking there. Maybe he, like Blackjack, was no longer able to make it out, his prostate issues finally catching up to him.
The town we lived in bought a farm with a prairie growing an infinite number of wildflowers, a marsh where egrets and herons gathered, and multiple pairs of bluebird houses. I would have loved to walk it with Mike. Why hadn’t I asked for his contact information? Every time we met I left after saying goodbye thinking I’d see him next time when we would exchange phone numbers or emails, when more convenient, when we had more time.
Now I step onto the gravel trail, look up and down the shady path, see one bike rider in the distance, know it’s not Mike, know I won’t see him today, and know I won’t see him again, ever.
Richard Holinger
Richard Holinger’s work has recently appeared in Chautauqua, SIR, Cleaver, Whitefish Review, Cutleaf, and elsewhere. Nominations include the Pushcart Prize (5), Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction 2025, including the latter. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays). His 2025 poetry chapbook, Down from the Sycamores, is available from www.finishinglinepress.com, and a short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publications. He holds a doctorate in creative writing from UIC, taught high school and community college English for decades, and lives in rural northern Illinois.
January 2026 | nonfiction
Monochrome Lane
The strip mall may well be on its last legs, but it still litters the landscape of many American towns and suburbs, especially here in Florida – an aggressively charmless, deservedly unloved suburban phenomenon that usually consists of nothing more than a basic parking lot with, at one end, a drably functional strip of windowed boxes that are usually rented out to low-end retail businesses, some local, some nation or regional chains, their motley commercial signage usually obeying no single design standard.
Running an errand on my bike one afternoon, I came to the example of this phenomenon nearest to where I live, a fairly large one, and, to avoid the unpredictable driving of cars using the busier sections of its expansive and otherwise mostly empty parking lot, I chose to cut through the service lane that runs between the back of the stores and some woods and wetlands where, as a bonus, I thought I might spot some interesting water fowl, although what ended up catching my eye instead was the back of the strip mall itself, and how extreme an aggravation you might say it was of the drabness in front. If the front looked drab, the back was drabness itself, because all of it was painted one color, a light, muddy yellow-brown. The effect was eerie, and ended up seeming even artful. It was as though a revealing statement were being made about the deceptive nature of the front, about how, behind commerce’s meretricious variety, lies a drably monochromatic, rather industrial sameness. And it was a statement that, sadly, could have extended to the lives of those suburban residents, including me, whom this strip mall was intended to serve. Not only were the backs of the different stores not distinguished by differing hues, the features on those buildings were not, so that I had to concentrate to notice, then to identify, the things camouflaged by that monochrome mudslide of yellow. The building backs were deprived not only of difference but, practically, of a third dimension, the clayey quality of the paint being such that it seemed to elude shadows, flattening doorknobs, locks, door jambs, vents, grills, lamp standards, lamp shades, awnings, AC plants, large industrial alarm bells, sundry wires, cables, pipes, casings. It called to mind the desert topography of long-dead worlds where all features are merely vestigial.
So it came almost as a shock when one of those vestigial doors swung open and someone — a living person, a woman, a worker — appeared, backing out uncertainly. It turned out that she was pulling a shopping cart after her, and her hesitancy had to do with the fact that the cart was piled high with precariously perched empty brown boxes, the sameness of their color echoing the sameness of the color of the back of the strip mall, as if delivering the same dismaying message.
Carlos Cunha
Carlos Cunha is a journalist. His literary writing was noted in the Best American Essays 2019 anthology edited by Rebecca Solnit, and he has been published in the Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a Seattle Review edition edited by David Shields. Born in Portugal, he grew up in South Africa and lives in Gainesville, Florida.
January 2026 | nonfiction
So You’ve Decided to Convert Your Middle-Aged Bedroom into a Magical Forest But All You Have is Amazon and Weed
Take the edible and ask yourself which discount rug seems most like grass. Whisper the now popular refrain “touch grass.” Then make sure that it won’t feel like grass, but draw the line at watching an “unboxing” video. Select accompanying “portal” curtains, wall-size mushroom tapestries, and a comforter that looks like glistening moss under the cool blue moonlight. Change the quantity on the grass vibe rug. You will need 3. You should be ensconced. One rug cannot provide more than a sample patch. Will your feet sink into it? That’s necessary. Of course, if they sink in too far the vacuum will devour it and burn out its belt. That’s what happened when it ate a catnip mouse. Check for a depth measurement.
Will the portal look silly if the curtains’ width is too wide? Select a narrower width so as not to crumple the magical image printed on them when they are hung up. Confront a different problem. Will the curtains provide blackout calm if they only just kiss in the center? It’s possible that the forced air heat could pop them open at vulnerable moments of nudity. Decide to sacrifice the integrity of the portal image and change back to a wider width.
Assess your cart total. Save most items for later.
Become distracted by the photographic tiger wall decal. Would a tiger enter a magical forest, and if not, why not? Add to cart. You’ll have a tiger. You deserve that much.
Close the app. Take a moment to ask yourself if this transformation can save you from the shit life you built. After all, you’ll mostly be asleep in here. Odds of teleporting to a believably magic land are low. You’ll still do things like buy groceries, pay bills online, and go to work nearly everyday of your entire life. You’ll still be annoyed by traffic and by every stripe of human incompetence within your purview.
Open the app.
Rethink this whole thing and convert the plan to Granny’s gentle country cottage. You’ll need crochet everything. Is now the right time to consider a shelf? It is. You’ll require a series of porcelain dolls and those will each need a doll stand. Should their hair color be consistent? What if you select all redheads? That seems cozy. Type in “porcelain dolls with red hair.” Observe the prices and consider your investment pieces. Type “cross stitch tissue box holder.”
Close the app. Re-open.
Re-think in ocean submersion. Add watery curtains galloping with dolphins. Change to orca pattern. Consider a light projector that mimics waves. Type “ocean decal.” The shark is too aggressive. Scroll for manatee.
Shut the app. Okay, okay. Re-open. Let’s get this right.
Rethink in vintage bordello. A velvet comforter and rhinestone chandeliers. You’ll need new knobs on your accordian-style closet door, something opulent.
Stop. Buy nothing. Close the fucking app. My god.
Sarah Sorensen
Sarah Sorensen (she/her), MA, MLIS is a queer writer based in the Metro Detroit area. She has been published over 80 times in literary magazines, but her most recent work appears in Another Chicago Magazine and Garland. She’s honored to be a Best Small Fictions 2025 and runner-up in the 2025 Rock Paper Poem Poetry Contest. Sarah is currently completing her first novel, despite an array of distractions from her fiery dog daughter and unstoppable cat son. Until then, you can find her forthcoming work in The Broadkill Review and Prime Number Magazine!
January 2026 | nonfiction
Identity
You have a love-hate relationship with eagles.
It’s the national animal for your home nest, also the national emblem for your chosen nest.
In the end, it’s all just a bunch of letters and feathers. If you’re lucky, some numbers, too, but let’s be honest, your A# doesn’t define what your mom used to feed you for breakfast, or the classical literature you read in your first language and later in your second language and then – yes, because you’re committed to excellence – your third language. Neither do the W— forms your spouse had to fill out to sponsor you into this country that said you should, could never be a burden and you should never break a law and you would not be allowed to sit on a jury or vote, unless – unless! – you paid X amount of $ and filled out a gazillion forms and studied for a test about something called civics –
but when you do, you question the test questions and especially what the answers have to do with what is now happening within these borders and whether along the line when you did the dishes and paid the taxes and taught your children proper English and told them not to break any laws you somehow misunderstood something about eagles all along.
Their calls, it turns out, are puny.
Shrill, really – look at me but then look away while I do something not worthy.
They may glide majestically and drop a kingly feather here or there, but they often feast on what others have gleaned and achieved and scavenge when no one is watching.
You get a crick in your neck squinting up at them and then you stumble because you forgot where your feet really belong.
To label something as royal or emblematic because it looks and hoots like an eagle – naw, you lose faith in that, and also in those random numbers and letters printed on documents that were supposed to hold your destiny in inky hands, but then really just lied about who you are and what keeps you safe in this place in which you had hoped to land.
Alina Zollfrank
Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She believes artists and writers are humanity’s true pulse, social media might just kill our essence, and produce should be shared with neighbors. Her work has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, and recently appeared in SAND, Door Is A Jar, Tint, and Cholla Needles, with more forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Reckon Review, and Heavy Feather Review. Alina is a grateful recipient of the 2024 Washington Artist Trust Grant and committed disability advocate.
January 2026 | nonfiction
Not Another Tragic Fattie
Your new sixth-grade class already had its own rhythms, inside jokes, and hierarchy. Like, it was already over halfway through the school year.
And there was this fat girl—like really fat. Like, nearly 200lbs-fat.
She was such a nerd. Like, during oral book reports in front of the class, hers had weird titles like Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Openers of Old Oregon Volume No. 1.
She was super into Jesus. Like, she quoted Bible verses and invited people to her church for some sort of club on Wednesday nights with a weird name: AWANA. Kinda like marijuana except it had nothing to do with weed because that would have been cool.
She seemed sorta poor. Like, she didn’t wear Esprit sweatshirts and Guess jeans like the other girls. Her shirts had uneven stitches on material that was too thick or the wrong color. And she had pants that looked like they were trying to be jeans except there were no belt loops or fly but buttoned up on the side.
The fat kid is always picked on, right? Like, in every movie or TV show or after school special where there’s a fat kid. I mean, have you ever heard of a fat kid who wasn’t bullied?
Except nobody said anything when you said whatever it was you said to make fun of me—maybe that I had a fat butt? Like, they didn’t say much of anything at all to you after that. I felt a certain schadenfreude seeing you sitting alone on a swing at recess, even as I understood you had said what you said in an effort to belong. I did not know then how to reconcile my feelings of vindication and relief with Christian charity (which I work hard to practice though I’m not as Evangelical these days).
Even though I went to a different elementary school every year (because yeah, I was sorta poor), I had little experience with other kids teasing me about my weight. Like, I have only one other memory before you: in second grade two boys shouted something at recess about me being fat—though I cannot remember what. My girlfriends yelled something back at them, and we went back to playing whatever it was we were playing.
Rates of bullying against fat kids vary wildly. Like, anywhere between 19% to 60% depending on how it is measured (I’m totally still a nerd). Those numbers mean that there are a whole lot of fat kids who don’t get bullied.
The fat kid is not a guaranteed victim. Like, being fat (current weight: 268lbs) need not be a tragic trope.
Michelle Strausbaugh
Michelle Strausbaugh is a chronic illness management specialist working from a bed in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine (and she’s still buzzed that it was nominated for a Pushcart).
