Navy Blue Lace Floral Dress by Ella Morin (9) FULL PIECE
That you bought for your mother’s Christmas party but are using far too soon. The dress that you will never touch again but will stay in your closet remaining pristine, a constant reminder of the night. It’s only May and you are getting dressed trying to hold back silent tears as your mother shouts at your wailing brother in the room next door. He doesn’t want to put on his clothes. You get it, you understand completely. If you could just get into your soft and fuzzy pinky pie pyjamas and crawl into bed with your mom giving you cuddles and consoling you, you would. If you could just fall asleep and escape reality you would, but instead you are here. Trying to zip up your uncomfortably loose dress. Preparing to go to one of the most uncomfortable places on earth, to sit in a room and watch your grieving relatives hold back tears of their own. Your mom walks in. “Do you need help honey?” You shake your head trying not to let her know how you feel. “Okay then” she says softly as she turns around to grab your brother.
Five minutes later she shouts your name from the bottom of the stairs alerting you that it is time to leave. You make your way down the stairs, the dress is already itchy, you see your brother with a tear stained face reaching for his collar to loosen the clip on tie that he had been fighting so hard not to wear, your mother and who’s stress wrinkles crease her face like a broken in boot, and your father whose eyes are bloodshot and damp for the first time in your life. You gulp back the lump in your throat that just seems to keep resurfacing. Once you finish putting on your shoes, you get in the car where an eerie silence disrupts the natural flow of conversation that usually occurs. No jokes. No questions. Nothing. Just a silence so painful that the air feels heavy, unbreathable. Although you want the ride to feel like forever, it feels like a blink. And now you have to face him. Face the fact that this is the last time that you see him. And you have to see him, his horribly still as stone face.
You get out of the car and make your way to the black brick building, enter the door and there is your family, your grandma who looks empty, your grandpa who is usually so bubbly and loud looking down, his personality robbed by the never concluding heartache of losing his only son. You see your aunts standing side by side as if they needed one another to remain standing, and your cousin holding her one year old son, gripping to him as if he would slip away in one moment. They welcome you and your family and you enter, reminding yourself to place one foot in front of the other. You round the corner and that’s when you see him…The man who you loved so dearly, who would chase you and your brother around the house playing tickle monster, one day being so fun that your brother smacked his head into the wall leaving a dent that would stay for years to come, the man who called your mom frantically on Christmas morning in 2015, angry because he thought that you were already awake and opening presents without him, the man who made terrible fart jokes the man who is now laying lifeless in a coffin for everyone to see.
Throughout the night you try, but it’s as if there is a barrier stopping you from getting too close, you watch people go up to him, hold his hands, kiss his forehead, say their final goodbye but you can’t do it, you can’t seem to work up the courage to even look at him. So instead you cower, reside in other rooms with your brother and baby cousin, simply nod or shake your head when spoken to, you’re intimidated by the prospect of death, by the gravity of the situation. Every attempt you make to get close is made impossible, all that you can focus on is the people, your cousin walking around, your step-cousins sitting side by side on the chairs lined against the mirrored wall.
When you finally leave it is just you, your brother and your dad. You go to the marble slab on Bank and Third, and that is when it is finally over. You will regret your choice for the rest of your life but for now it’s a relief. You are in denial, so as you sit on the windowsill gripping the large crispy waffle cone that holds your sickly sweet vanilla ice cream that leaks out dripping its sticky liquid onto your fingers, you feel at peace. It’s selfish. But you are a child, a child who doesn’t understand grief but rather happy and sad, good or bad. It’s miserable, and you will come to wish that you had said your goodbye, given a hug and said the words “I love you” but by then it will be too late.
Navy Blue
Blueberries, Macaws, dart frogs, blue jays, dory, Facebook, the sky at dusk on a humid spring’s night, sapphires, cornflowers, peacocks, Neptune, cyanide, crayfish that hide under rocks in the ponds on those little islands across the lake from your cottage, irises, peonies, the eyes of your best friend, blue sharks, lupine, Veronica, the dark and relentless ocean that does not stop for anyone - the one with the deadly undertow that will grab you and pull you in yanking you deeper and deeper into the water, until your lungs fill with the burning salty water and the lights go out, depression, the darkness that took your uncle, the blue lilies that sat in the square tubs next to his casket, glowing jellyfish.
Five minutes later she shouts your name from the bottom of the stairs alerting you that it is time to leave. You make your way down the stairs, the dress is already itchy, you see your brother with a tear stained face reaching for his collar to loosen the clip on tie that he had been fighting so hard not to wear, your mother and who’s stress wrinkles crease her face like a broken in boot, and your father whose eyes are bloodshot and damp for the first time in your life. You gulp back the lump in your throat that just seems to keep resurfacing. Once you finish putting on your shoes, you get in the car where an eerie silence disrupts the natural flow of conversation that usually occurs. No jokes. No questions. Nothing. Just a silence so painful that the air feels heavy, unbreathable. Although you want the ride to feel like forever, it feels like a blink. And now you have to face him. Face the fact that this is the last time that you see him. And you have to see him, his horribly still as stone face.
You get out of the car and make your way to the black brick building, enter the door and there is your family, your grandma who looks empty, your grandpa who is usually so bubbly and loud looking down, his personality robbed by the never concluding heartache of losing his only son. You see your aunts standing side by side as if they needed one another to remain standing, and your cousin holding her one year old son, gripping to him as if he would slip away in one moment. They welcome you and your family and you enter, reminding yourself to place one foot in front of the other. You round the corner and that’s when you see him…The man who you loved so dearly, who would chase you and your brother around the house playing tickle monster, one day being so fun that your brother smacked his head into the wall leaving a dent that would stay for years to come, the man who called your mom frantically on Christmas morning in 2015, angry because he thought that you were already awake and opening presents without him, the man who made terrible fart jokes the man who is now laying lifeless in a coffin for everyone to see.
Throughout the night you try, but it’s as if there is a barrier stopping you from getting too close, you watch people go up to him, hold his hands, kiss his forehead, say their final goodbye but you can’t do it, you can’t seem to work up the courage to even look at him. So instead you cower, reside in other rooms with your brother and baby cousin, simply nod or shake your head when spoken to, you’re intimidated by the prospect of death, by the gravity of the situation. Every attempt you make to get close is made impossible, all that you can focus on is the people, your cousin walking around, your step-cousins sitting side by side on the chairs lined against the mirrored wall.
When you finally leave it is just you, your brother and your dad. You go to the marble slab on Bank and Third, and that is when it is finally over. You will regret your choice for the rest of your life but for now it’s a relief. You are in denial, so as you sit on the windowsill gripping the large crispy waffle cone that holds your sickly sweet vanilla ice cream that leaks out dripping its sticky liquid onto your fingers, you feel at peace. It’s selfish. But you are a child, a child who doesn’t understand grief but rather happy and sad, good or bad. It’s miserable, and you will come to wish that you had said your goodbye, given a hug and said the words “I love you” but by then it will be too late.
Navy Blue
Blueberries, Macaws, dart frogs, blue jays, dory, Facebook, the sky at dusk on a humid spring’s night, sapphires, cornflowers, peacocks, Neptune, cyanide, crayfish that hide under rocks in the ponds on those little islands across the lake from your cottage, irises, peonies, the eyes of your best friend, blue sharks, lupine, Veronica, the dark and relentless ocean that does not stop for anyone - the one with the deadly undertow that will grab you and pull you in yanking you deeper and deeper into the water, until your lungs fill with the burning salty water and the lights go out, depression, the darkness that took your uncle, the blue lilies that sat in the square tubs next to his casket, glowing jellyfish.
We Didn't Start The Fire by Zachary Atchison (9) FULL PIECE
The clink of at least twenty glasses meeting in the middle is instantly overpowered by the music blaring out of the bar’s three-foot-tall speakers, which are each stationed to one side of the improvised stage: a haphazard arrangement of several tables pushed together. To be fair, I'm impressed nobody’s fallen off and cracked their skull open yet, especially with the way some people have been jumping up and down on it.
I nearly chip my teeth on the rim of my glass when I down its contents, watching the small group of people disperse back into the controlled chaos of before. The liquor clings to my tongue, sweet-tasting for a half a second before the vile bitterness underneath introduces itself. I force back a gag and gaze out into the crowd; some people are dancing, others are writhing around in a crude imitation of dancing, and a few are trying to talk to each other in spite of the cacophony around them. Every glass in the room is empty, though, and none of us are too keen on pouring ourselves another.
A woman in a cropped band tee hops up onto the stage, her bright green hair glowing under the blacklight. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks into the microphone, every word accented Greek. “Hey, I’ve got something to say. So listen up.”
Heads turn in her direction as someone silences the music, shouting brought down to a handful of mutters as a result. All eyes are on her, but she doesn’t shrink under the attention like most people would. In fact, it only seems to embolden her.
“I haven’t been here as long as most of you,” she begins, her eyes scanning the throng of bodies as if trying to make sure her words reach every single one of us. “Not long at all. My twentieth birthday’s supposed to be in three days. I was born in the middle of all this, so I never knew what it was like, well… before. I’ve never seen the sun, never been to an actual school, never been on those spinning things they have at playgrounds; what are they called? Round-a-bouts. Yeah, never been on one of those, no matter how much I begged my Baba after dark. Christ, none of this matters, I’m going off here…
“Basically, I didn’t have anything to miss about the old world, because I never saw it. We talked about it in class sometimes, but I always felt this kind of… disconnect. Like it wasn’t any different from talking about the Spanish flu. What’s done is done, you know? Even if you could go back, you couldn’t cure influenza with the technology they had back then. They’d burn you at the stake for being a witch, or something. I don’t know. History was always my worst subject.
“But then the Lockdown happened. I was sixteen. All at once, the world I did know was taken away from me. No more going over to friend’s houses. No more shopping malls. No more fresh air; did you hear? That isn’t safe to breathe anymore. In fact, you have to bring everything you need for survival down to your basement because suddenly blackout window covers aren’t enough. Even then, we were lucky. Some people didn’t have basements. For over three years, we had twelve strangers packed into ours.
“To stop myself from going insane, and to keep my English, I read a lot on my PC. Started with fiction novels; epic fantasy, romance, that sort of thing. I thought I could just… escape until the government fixed things. I thought the government was going to fix things. Well, for the first year, I did.
“I don’t know when, or how, but I stumbled across a book about the 2020s when I was browsing the online library. It was titled “The Beginning of the End” or something cynical like that, which drew me right in. I learned about things back then; the COVID pandemic, the wars, et cetera.
“I learned about climate change. They liked to glaze over that part in History class. To tell us the way things turned out was inevitable. But it wasn’t inevitable. It was the most evitable thing ever. We were the ones who had poisoned our planet to the point where it was uninhabitable. For oil. For lithium. For plastic. For greed. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. All I know is that we wouldn’t be here tonight, all of us, if our great-grandparents had put in the work to do better. And that… that pisses me off.”
She turns her head to stare out through the window, eyes glinting with tears and bitter acceptance, remarkably composed for someone who’s probably had a few. Nobody else does; we already know what’s out there. We’re just waiting for her to continue.
“ ‘The planet’s on fucking fire,’ ” she speaks up again, albeit quieter than before. When she turns back, her gaze is trained on her trembling fingers around the microphone, rather than the crowd. “A children’s science educator said that on a late-night talk show. Bill Nye the Science Guy, he was called. I think about that a lot. Maybe, if people had listened to him, or to anyone else, things would be different. But they didn’t. We can’t go back and force them to care. We can’t fix the world as it is now.”
She pauses, as if in thought, before continuing, renewed determination in her gaze as it falls back onto the gathering of people. “But what we can do—what we should do—now, is forget about all of that. Forget about fire, carbon, all of it! We’re here tonight to enjoy what we do still have, not to mope about what we don’t. And what we’ve got is a bar, a stereo, and a kickass dance floor!”
A voice in the audience breaks into a cheer, and the effect it has is immediate, countless others joining in to flood the room with noise in lieu of the music from before. Her speech is one we can all identify with, renewing our spirits despite the grimness of what lies ahead. When the cheering dies down and she turns to jump off the stage, I raise my empty glass in a gesture of respect. “Happy twentieth!”
My words are echoed by everyone else, and the woman smiles before lowering herself to the floor. “Someone turn the music back on. It’s too quiet in here.”
Within seconds, the sound of drums, guitar, and synthesizer pierces the aforementioned quiet, triggering a second bout of cheering. The melody brings a grin to my face; it’s an appropriate song to end the night with. Billy Joel’s voice is soon drowned out by that of the crowd’s, each one of us singing along to the lyrics we know by heart. Sure, it might be dated, but it’s become an anthem of sorts for us all these last twenty-three years; a song painting the picture of ceaseless human conflict.
I’ve never been one for huge parties. I always figured they were a waste of time, an escape from reality into red-solo-cup-cocktails and head-splitting mobs. In a way, that’s exactly what tonight is. We’re escaping from ourselves, our past, and, most evidently, the world.
A hand grasps my wrist, tugging me in its direction, and before I can even register it, I’m pulled into a full-blown mosh pit. The pit doubles in size almost as quickly, swelling with what must be hundreds of thrashing bodies. Under normal circumstances, I’d find moshing to Billy Joel a little silly. These are hardly normal circumstances, though, so I’m willing to let it slide.
I join in on the rough movements, repeatedly bumping shoulders with the people next to me. My muscles protest every motion, my head twinges from the pandemonium, and my throat soon stings from shouting. But I don’t stop, and neither does anyone else. It’s chaos, and it’s not controlled in the slightest, as it was before; I’m being shoved this way and that, my ears ringing so loudly I can barely hear the music anymore.
It’s exhilarating. Invigorating. Freeing.
It’s the first time I’ve truly felt at home since I was fourteen. Shoulder to shoulder with several people, jumping up and down, because we know there’s no tomorrow. A final middle finger to everyone who came before us.
I nearly chip my teeth on the rim of my glass when I down its contents, watching the small group of people disperse back into the controlled chaos of before. The liquor clings to my tongue, sweet-tasting for a half a second before the vile bitterness underneath introduces itself. I force back a gag and gaze out into the crowd; some people are dancing, others are writhing around in a crude imitation of dancing, and a few are trying to talk to each other in spite of the cacophony around them. Every glass in the room is empty, though, and none of us are too keen on pouring ourselves another.
A woman in a cropped band tee hops up onto the stage, her bright green hair glowing under the blacklight. Her voice is hoarse when she speaks into the microphone, every word accented Greek. “Hey, I’ve got something to say. So listen up.”
Heads turn in her direction as someone silences the music, shouting brought down to a handful of mutters as a result. All eyes are on her, but she doesn’t shrink under the attention like most people would. In fact, it only seems to embolden her.
“I haven’t been here as long as most of you,” she begins, her eyes scanning the throng of bodies as if trying to make sure her words reach every single one of us. “Not long at all. My twentieth birthday’s supposed to be in three days. I was born in the middle of all this, so I never knew what it was like, well… before. I’ve never seen the sun, never been to an actual school, never been on those spinning things they have at playgrounds; what are they called? Round-a-bouts. Yeah, never been on one of those, no matter how much I begged my Baba after dark. Christ, none of this matters, I’m going off here…
“Basically, I didn’t have anything to miss about the old world, because I never saw it. We talked about it in class sometimes, but I always felt this kind of… disconnect. Like it wasn’t any different from talking about the Spanish flu. What’s done is done, you know? Even if you could go back, you couldn’t cure influenza with the technology they had back then. They’d burn you at the stake for being a witch, or something. I don’t know. History was always my worst subject.
“But then the Lockdown happened. I was sixteen. All at once, the world I did know was taken away from me. No more going over to friend’s houses. No more shopping malls. No more fresh air; did you hear? That isn’t safe to breathe anymore. In fact, you have to bring everything you need for survival down to your basement because suddenly blackout window covers aren’t enough. Even then, we were lucky. Some people didn’t have basements. For over three years, we had twelve strangers packed into ours.
“To stop myself from going insane, and to keep my English, I read a lot on my PC. Started with fiction novels; epic fantasy, romance, that sort of thing. I thought I could just… escape until the government fixed things. I thought the government was going to fix things. Well, for the first year, I did.
“I don’t know when, or how, but I stumbled across a book about the 2020s when I was browsing the online library. It was titled “The Beginning of the End” or something cynical like that, which drew me right in. I learned about things back then; the COVID pandemic, the wars, et cetera.
“I learned about climate change. They liked to glaze over that part in History class. To tell us the way things turned out was inevitable. But it wasn’t inevitable. It was the most evitable thing ever. We were the ones who had poisoned our planet to the point where it was uninhabitable. For oil. For lithium. For plastic. For greed. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. All I know is that we wouldn’t be here tonight, all of us, if our great-grandparents had put in the work to do better. And that… that pisses me off.”
She turns her head to stare out through the window, eyes glinting with tears and bitter acceptance, remarkably composed for someone who’s probably had a few. Nobody else does; we already know what’s out there. We’re just waiting for her to continue.
“ ‘The planet’s on fucking fire,’ ” she speaks up again, albeit quieter than before. When she turns back, her gaze is trained on her trembling fingers around the microphone, rather than the crowd. “A children’s science educator said that on a late-night talk show. Bill Nye the Science Guy, he was called. I think about that a lot. Maybe, if people had listened to him, or to anyone else, things would be different. But they didn’t. We can’t go back and force them to care. We can’t fix the world as it is now.”
She pauses, as if in thought, before continuing, renewed determination in her gaze as it falls back onto the gathering of people. “But what we can do—what we should do—now, is forget about all of that. Forget about fire, carbon, all of it! We’re here tonight to enjoy what we do still have, not to mope about what we don’t. And what we’ve got is a bar, a stereo, and a kickass dance floor!”
A voice in the audience breaks into a cheer, and the effect it has is immediate, countless others joining in to flood the room with noise in lieu of the music from before. Her speech is one we can all identify with, renewing our spirits despite the grimness of what lies ahead. When the cheering dies down and she turns to jump off the stage, I raise my empty glass in a gesture of respect. “Happy twentieth!”
My words are echoed by everyone else, and the woman smiles before lowering herself to the floor. “Someone turn the music back on. It’s too quiet in here.”
Within seconds, the sound of drums, guitar, and synthesizer pierces the aforementioned quiet, triggering a second bout of cheering. The melody brings a grin to my face; it’s an appropriate song to end the night with. Billy Joel’s voice is soon drowned out by that of the crowd’s, each one of us singing along to the lyrics we know by heart. Sure, it might be dated, but it’s become an anthem of sorts for us all these last twenty-three years; a song painting the picture of ceaseless human conflict.
I’ve never been one for huge parties. I always figured they were a waste of time, an escape from reality into red-solo-cup-cocktails and head-splitting mobs. In a way, that’s exactly what tonight is. We’re escaping from ourselves, our past, and, most evidently, the world.
A hand grasps my wrist, tugging me in its direction, and before I can even register it, I’m pulled into a full-blown mosh pit. The pit doubles in size almost as quickly, swelling with what must be hundreds of thrashing bodies. Under normal circumstances, I’d find moshing to Billy Joel a little silly. These are hardly normal circumstances, though, so I’m willing to let it slide.
I join in on the rough movements, repeatedly bumping shoulders with the people next to me. My muscles protest every motion, my head twinges from the pandemonium, and my throat soon stings from shouting. But I don’t stop, and neither does anyone else. It’s chaos, and it’s not controlled in the slightest, as it was before; I’m being shoved this way and that, my ears ringing so loudly I can barely hear the music anymore.
It’s exhilarating. Invigorating. Freeing.
It’s the first time I’ve truly felt at home since I was fourteen. Shoulder to shoulder with several people, jumping up and down, because we know there’s no tomorrow. A final middle finger to everyone who came before us.
|
♪ We didn’t start the fire ♪
Blacklights quickly become little more than smears of bright purple as my vision blurs. ♪ It was always burning, since the world’s been turning ♪ One by one, the people around me begin slumping to the ground. ♪ We didn’t start the fire ♪ My knees buckle beneath me as I follow suit. ♪ No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it ♪ The world around me fades to black as the pentobarbital takes hold. |
Art by Zachary Atchison (9)
|
Bittersweet Back and Forth by Rachel Kilgour (9) FULL PIECE
Woody has always been my favorite.
Elegant as she dances, twirling, spiraling, scrawling. Adorned in beautiful greens, yellows, purples. Red stains on dusted finger tips, bleeding and dripping and gone. I’d find her out in the garden, climbing the fence, or scaling the walls. And she would wave as the wind flitted about, blowing around leaves and dust. We went on like that for a while. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
It’s cold, tonight. The wind no longer flits about but instead howls, shaking the windows. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Woody. She faded into the background, and we went our separate ways. I finished school, got a job. I didn’t have time for her anymore.
Didn’t have time for dangerous late nights and sparkling early mornings; purple and red blending into my skin, laid limp in the grass as we stared at the stars.
My chair creaks as I rock it back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
It’s cold, tonight. The wind no longer flits about but instead howls, shaking the windows. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Woody. She faded into the background, and we went our separate ways. I finished school, got a job. I didn’t have time for her anymore.
Didn’t have time for dangerous late nights and sparkling early mornings; purple and red blending into my skin, laid limp in the grass as we stared at the stars.
My chair creaks as I rock it back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
She came back to me, recently. No longer hidden against walls and fences, plump red beckoning me forward. I plucked them, tonight; put some water to boil. Grabbed blankets and pillows to cozy the place up and lock out the chill. When the kettle began to screech, Woody had finally settled.
I grunted when I sat, mug nearly scorching my hand and toes wiggling beneath the blanket. The chair creaked. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
I let the tea flow over my tongue, let the sweetness stick to my teeth and make my gums grainy with sugar. My mother used to tell me not to trust so easily. In the end, she was the only one I didn’t trust. My curiosity often got the better of me. Woody would only observe.
But not tonight. Tonight, she finally joined me. I take my final sip of tea, let it dry out my mouth as I shiver at the sweetness. The bittersweet taste of Nightshade.
Woody Nightshade was always my favorite. Purple flowers and green leaves, vines crawling and climbing and spiraling across garden walls and fences. She used to wave at me, her stems wiggling in the wind, and beckon me forward. Curiosity got the best of me, and so here I am, settling to sleep, a bittersweet dream just out of reach.
Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
Elegant as she dances, twirling, spiraling, scrawling. Adorned in beautiful greens, yellows, purples. Red stains on dusted finger tips, bleeding and dripping and gone. I’d find her out in the garden, climbing the fence, or scaling the walls. And she would wave as the wind flitted about, blowing around leaves and dust. We went on like that for a while. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
It’s cold, tonight. The wind no longer flits about but instead howls, shaking the windows. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Woody. She faded into the background, and we went our separate ways. I finished school, got a job. I didn’t have time for her anymore.
Didn’t have time for dangerous late nights and sparkling early mornings; purple and red blending into my skin, laid limp in the grass as we stared at the stars.
My chair creaks as I rock it back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
It’s cold, tonight. The wind no longer flits about but instead howls, shaking the windows. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Woody. She faded into the background, and we went our separate ways. I finished school, got a job. I didn’t have time for her anymore.
Didn’t have time for dangerous late nights and sparkling early mornings; purple and red blending into my skin, laid limp in the grass as we stared at the stars.
My chair creaks as I rock it back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
She came back to me, recently. No longer hidden against walls and fences, plump red beckoning me forward. I plucked them, tonight; put some water to boil. Grabbed blankets and pillows to cozy the place up and lock out the chill. When the kettle began to screech, Woody had finally settled.
I grunted when I sat, mug nearly scorching my hand and toes wiggling beneath the blanket. The chair creaked. Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.
I let the tea flow over my tongue, let the sweetness stick to my teeth and make my gums grainy with sugar. My mother used to tell me not to trust so easily. In the end, she was the only one I didn’t trust. My curiosity often got the better of me. Woody would only observe.
But not tonight. Tonight, she finally joined me. I take my final sip of tea, let it dry out my mouth as I shiver at the sweetness. The bittersweet taste of Nightshade.
Woody Nightshade was always my favorite. Purple flowers and green leaves, vines crawling and climbing and spiraling across garden walls and fences. She used to wave at me, her stems wiggling in the wind, and beckon me forward. Curiosity got the best of me, and so here I am, settling to sleep, a bittersweet dream just out of reach.
Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back, and forth.