There is a jukebox in the corner
Where saddle shoes used to tread
Under skirts and socks with lace
Splattered with drippings from
Chocolate malts and shakes,
Where pearls would bounce
And roll across the floor.
Tile black and white—
I know it sounds trite
Like paisley on a bow tie
But patterns and bow ties
Bring order to the madness—
Also hamburgers, French fries
Ponytails and Snake Eyes.
He came to this place
Where the music was stuck—
Records displaying
Yellowed faces
Songs replaying
Grooves worn low
Weary, dull and much too slow.
Going backward
Isn’t really his thing
But there came a day
When his soul melted
Slipped through his lungs
Leaked and oozed
Puddled around the soles of his shoes.
Forward
No longer
Was an option for him—
What was he supposed to do?
Walk away, a shell of a man
Empty but for the wind
Whistling through?
He stood
Until noon traveled around him
Draped over the moon
Darkness descended,
Then fell his soul
Standing stuck
He heard the rattling of a rancid truck.
“Move aside,”
Said a man
Who smelled like Linus looks
Plus the tan lines of a garbage man,
“You’re in my way,
and what is this filth
at your feet?”
Accustomed to the dross
Of the city streets
With fetid hands the garbage man
Began to lift the spilt soul
Which was running into the ditch but,
“Wait!,”
Cried the empty man.
“That is not junk
though it lacks the glow
of gold
please leave it here
with me
it is all I have
if the truth is told.”
“All you have?”
Laughed the man
With the smell of human waste
On his hands,
“Then pick it up.”
Then came the second truth,
“I can’t.”
“I need your help,”
The wind spun around his tongue
Then played the space
Between his ribs
And his lungs
Like a concerto for weakening
Flesh and bone.
“Damn it all,”
The collector of trash replied
As he bent at the waist
To clean up the spill
That rolled down the hill
Before it crusted, caked and dried
Under the heat of the sun.
“I’ll put it in your pocket
now move along
get something to eat
there is a diner
across the street
that serves the lost
and the weak.”
And so, this is how he came
To the place echoing with the past—
The jukebox, the pearls
Where nothing was meant to last—
Fate brought him low
Then brought him here
To face the time where it all began
(Thanks to the garbage man).
“I don’t understand,”
He thought to himself
Then said it out loud
As his eyes rolled around
Searching for some logic
He could grip
Or some algorithm
He could apply to the script.
And then
Entered a ghost
With matted hair
On the sides of his head
Coming out of his ears,
A limp in his knee and
Teeth glowing green.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,”
Said the empty man
“Tough shit,”
Said the apparition
Blunt in his delivery and
Over dramatic
In his long flowing livery.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
Coughed the ghost
To which the live one replied,
“Do you always start with small talk?
I don’t mean to gawk but
your presence and general
demeanor are starting to piss me off.”
“You are here for a reason
and so am I
we need to get some things straight
before it’s too late
for you.
As you can see
it’s already too late for me.”
The beginning and the end
Sounded like a riddle
But somewhere in the middle
The living man
Recognized the voice,
“Dad?”
He squinted and then stuttered.
“No shit,”
Said the ghost and then
Once more,
“Do you have a cigarette?”
The living man
Almost fell to the floor
“Here, one of my last four.”
They sat in a booth,
The jukebox began to croon
They ordered hotdogs with ketchup
Had no forks
Cut their food with a spoon,
“I don’t mean to pry
but why have you come?”
“I met her here in 1952
we were both too young
to know what to do
so we loved and had fun
and then she had you
I thought of staying
but I couldn’t follow through.”
They sipped coke through a straw
To fill the long pause,
“Again, I wonder
why are you here?”
The ice clinked
In the ghost’s tall curvy glass,
“I know I was an ass
I feel kind of bad
I heard you needed me there
but I didn’t know—
shit—
it was hard to stay away
and hard to stay
I wanted to say . . .”
A pause.
And a tightening of the throat
Both the man and the ghost
Turned and squirmed,
“But why today?”
Asked the living son
Who wanted to run but chose to stay.
“Before I go to my final space
I was given the gift
once more
to see your face
and written there
I saw your hopelessness—
it rendered my journey motionless.”
“Is that when my soul
dripped all the way out?”
The ghost whispered back,
“That wasn’t your soul
it was fear and self-doubt
and I couldn’t help but
notice my name
on the puss that spilled out
so I used my airy powers
to stop your feet
with the little time I have left
I wanted to meet
in case my song repeats
after I’m gone.”
The air was still
Atmosphere heavy
Like before a storm
The ground felt shaky
And covered with worms
Snakes, anteaters and obese germs.
“I took a bit of you
and left too much of me
dropped you in a hole
of anonymity
no sure identity
as is given by a dad
and when you reached for me
your hand collapsed
empty
confused
your confidence slid—
but hear me now:
you are the best thing
I ever did.”
The living man
Felt a peace begin to grow
In a place he did not know
Existed before today
Above his ribs, above his lungs
Where scabs were hung
Replaced with Band-Aids.
“I didn’t know
and I have a lot of questions
but I feel your time is fleeting
so I will ask only one
why wait
so late
to have this meeting?”
“Time is made of seconds and of hours
each tick devours each tock
as we ignore the face of the clock
take for granted the breath
and selfishly hold the seasons
in vaults of the mind we keep locked
for prideful reasons.
But I tell you,
my son,
you are not
hopeless
I see your shine
and as long as you are living
there is still
time
so live
and be the you that is
free
of the weight of me
and my stupidity,
I am sorry.”
Then the ghost
He didn’t believe in
Vanished
To whence he came
But left a ray of something
Maybe hope
And the jukebox continued to play.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026 (updated)
Tag: short-story
Poem: And She Flew
Currents of wind
Grasping blue
From the sky
Mixing colors—
Translucent white
Floating by
In puffs
Like smoke
But water
Cascading
Masquerading
As clouds, drifting down
To rest upon
The ocean’s top
Atop the undercurrents
Pulling dark and light
Together
In a haze
Under the phase
Of the moon
Where fullness
Steers the darkness
From the light.
At night the sense of
Flight
Alights
In dreams and hopes
A knotted rope
Hangs from the stars
And swings
As she sings
Like a bird
Whose song is sung
Carelessly
Without thought
She calls into the night
Filling it
From empty
To bright
And falls into
The space where
Downwind caresses
Upwind lifts
And buoyancy calls her
Higher still.
As hummingbirds swing
Creatures below
Sting
With venom held
Inside teeth
Red with the catching
Stories repeat
Through dust and mold
Dark with lies
Whispered inside
By unseen spies
Who feed on souls
Who fill the roles
Like actors
Paid to play
Unable to reach
The heart
And open—
Unfold
Like art.
The ones below
Whose wings were clipped
Set a scheme
Narrow as a
Tightrope
A balance beam
A trap
Set with bait
And they waited
Inside a box
Designed to promise
The only way
Into hope
From hopelessness—
To pull her down
To steal her crown
A crucible
Of fire
Inside folded walls
Where stories
Cease to be told.
She flapped her wings
Tilted her head
Toward the earth
Wondered
Then wandered
Through the expanse
Where freedom
Takes its chance
On little birds
Such as she
She caught a breeze
Saw her reflection
In the sea
Caught a glimpse
Of her worth
And floated down
To the cardboard flaps
Of the box
The dark ones
Moved
Like worms
The kind of worms
Eaten by birds.
It looked easy enough
Fold the second flap
Then the first
And follow the way
They had planned
To be kept
From the sky
From the breeze
From the warmth of the sun
The turn of the season
From the spring
That would
Enchant her
Like a lover
Enhance her
With colors
Vibrant
Breathing
Beating
With life
To romance her.
“No,” she thought
And then—
“No,” she said
The comfort of that dark
Is stark
The safety of that space
Is small
A quiet that settles
For an hour
Sweet at first
Then turning
She felt it
And knew it
And chose—
She rose
And she flew
And she flew.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
The Wait
He arrived early.
He always arrived early. It gave him time to rehearse the version of himself he planned to be. The diner sat off the highway with wood paneling darkened by decades of smoke and winter. A Budweiser mirror hung behind the counter. The jukebox near the bathrooms blinked in patient pinks and greens, waiting for quarters.
He chose the booth against the window. The vinyl was cracked in two places and repaired with strips of clear tape that had yellowed over time. He slid in, set his keys on the table, and checked his watch. The red numbers glowed briefly against his wrist before fading back to black.
7:42.
He trusted the red glow. It felt decisive.
The waitress, whose hair was sprayed into a shape that both defied and paid tribute to gravity, poured coffee into a thick white mug without asking. “You waiting on someone?” she said, already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” he replied, with a smile he practiced in rearview mirrors.
He adjusted the sleeve of his Members Only jacket. He pressed the edge of the paper placemat flat with his palm. The placemat advertised a local car dealership and smelled faintly of ink and grease. Outside the window, the parking lot held his car and one pickup truck that had been there since he arrived.
He imagined her walking in.
He imagined the bell over the door ringing once. He imagined not looking up immediately. He imagined letting her cross the room before lifting his eyes, as if her arrival were incidental and not the center of his evening.
He lifted the mug. The coffee was hot enough to require patience. Steam rose and vanished.
The door did not open.
7:58.
Maybe she was late.
Traffic collects where it pleases. A woman might linger at her kitchen counter, turning a ring around her finger. She might rehearse the first sentence and discard it. The evening could still be intact, only delayed.
The door did not open.
The first flicker of heat came when the clock above the counter clicked to 8:00, and the jukebox changed its lights. He felt it low in his chest, the way a swallowed word lingers. He realized he was counting the seconds between passing headlights in the parking lot. One. Two. Three. The gap stretched longer each time, like the space between lightning and thunder when the storm is blowing away.
He folded his hands on the table. He pressed his thumb against the rim of the mug to steady a tremor he refused to acknowledge.
The booth across from him remained empty.
The fire began quietly.
It gathered itself first, narrow and deliberate, like a man straightening his tie before stepping into a room. The flame rose from the center of him in a single, disciplined line, bright without frenzy. It kept its posture. It traced the length of his body with precision, as though even humiliation preferred form. The vinyl held. The napkin lay flat. The sugar caddy caught the light and gave nothing away. The fire belonged to him and to no other surface.
He did not look around.
He knew what it meant.
It was the heat of being visible without being chosen. It was the temperature of a man seated in plain sight while the woman he waited for occupied some other evening entirely.
He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and felt the soft crush of a Marlboro pack. He considered lighting one. He imagined the smoke blending with whatever rose from him. He left the pack where it was. It might smell more like nicotine and less like Stetson.
8:17.
He could leave.
He could stand, slide a five-dollar bill beneath the saucer, and nod at the waitress as though something had come up. He could step into the night before anyone calculated how long he had been there. He could revise the story later. He could say he changed his mind first.
Instead, he stayed.
He let the fire narrow him.
It burned through the scene he had rehearsed on the drive over. The way she would tuck her hair behind her ear. The way she would say his name as if it surprised her. The way the first silence between them would feel charged instead of awkward. Each imagined moment flared and collapsed, bright and brief.
The waitress wiped down the counter with a cloth that smelled faintly of bleach and Ranch dressing. A man in a trucker cap fed a quarter into the jukebox and selected a song that crackled before finding its melody.
The booth across from him held its vacancy with composure.
He understood then that absence makes an entrance of its own. It sits across from you and asks nothing. It leaves you to supply every explanation.
The heat climbed higher.
He felt it behind his eyes, where pride waits. He felt it in his throat, where apologies gather. He felt it in the small, involuntary tightening of his jaw.
He closed his eyes.
Behind his eyelids, color pressed and thinned, as if light were searching for a seam. The closed door no longer mattered. The parking lot no longer held narrative weight. What remained was the outline of himself, suspended in brightness, and the steady recognition that nothing outside him required explanation.
The fire thinned slowly, like steam from cooling coffee.
He opened his eyes.
He lifted the mug and drank what remained. The coffee had cooled into the color of old pennies. A bill lay beneath the saucer like a quiet offering. He stood and drew his palms down the front of his jacket, smoothing it as though pressing the last ember flat.
The bell above the door rang when he pushed it open. Just once.
“Yes,” he murmured. “That’s right.”
The night received him in its thin winter air. Gasoline, frost, distant highway. His breath moved cleanly now.
Inside the diner, nothing smoldered. The booth remained intact. The coffee cup cooled into porcelain silence.
The ash had settled elsewhere.
It lined his lungs. It sifted softly behind his ribs. It marked the place where waiting once stood.
He crossed the parking lot lighter by one imagined future.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Lucy, After
History prefers its geniuses solemn.
Preferably male.
Preferably seated.
Preferably holding a cigar—
not a cigarello
between long red fingernails.
Instead—
a woman with hair like an emergency flare.
Tell me:
who approved that color?
Which committee of grey
signed off on scarlet?
She slips on grapes.
The floor does not conspire.
Gravity does what gravity has always done.
The miracle is timing.
A conveyor belt advances chocolates
toward frenzy.
She does not manage the machinery.
She collaborates with it.
Is this not a form of authorship?
To be devoured publicly
and still shape the rhythm?
Another spoonful.
The vowels lose confidence.
A nation repeats the error
faithfully.
Behind the laughter—
what?
A pen moving.
A contract reconsidered.
A chair dragged two inches closer to the head of the table.
Two inches is nothing.
Two inches is history.
The cigars call her difficult.
Smoke prefers obedience.
Fire prefers oxygen.
Which one endures?
The camera adored her.
Which is to say
it surrendered.
Or did she surrender first—
learning its angles,
its appetite,
the exact duration of a silence
before an audience inhales?
Meanwhile, another actress waits
in a hallway that smells faintly of carpet glue
and compromise.
How long has she been there?
Since childhood?
Since the first “maybe next time”?
Lucy opens the door.
The actress who had trimmed her ambition
to fit inside the cigars’ shadows
discovers a window.
Somewhere, years later,
a woman walks into a room
and does not think to apologize.
How does permission travel?
Through blood?
Through rumor?
Through reruns?
The grapes are now wine.
The pratfall loops.
The Martian is still loitering
on the windowsill.
Was she a clown?
An executive?
A wife staging chaos while drafting order?
Yes.
Is solemnity the only costume
genius may wear?
If so,
why did the room tilt
when she leaned?
She falls.
She rises.
The laughter echoes.
The chairs remain turned
toward hers.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Woman Waking
She lifted her hands toward the sky—
White and heavy with snow-laden clouds—
And stretched all the way through
From the tips of her fingers
To the delicate curves of her ankles:
A sound flew and then fell from her lips.
It was a sigh of awake, a dream of asleep—
Her breath still deep but rising to the surface—
She could see the wrinkles of her pillow
Branded into her face, holding on
Until they too had to fall from her cheeks
And rise, like steam from a cup of coffee.
The birds outside her window sang—
Songs of newness, routines and plans—
And then they were muted by the clamor
Of coffee beans bursting with fragrance
And tones more lively than even the birds
Could muster through beaks that sip only water.
She sat at her table wearing pajamas—
White cotton speckled with flowers of pink—
And she touched the tip of her mug
To lips that had not yet spoken into the day
But made only the sound of awake
And she swallowed the warmth as she thought.
Her thinking became clear and her eyes became bright—
Brightened like snow when the sun begins to shine—
A plan began to spin and to whir
Like the cogs in a machine newly oiled,
The sound of movement—of forward—
And she hopped on the sound like a wave.
Into the day she rode on an idea with wings—
The feathers were big like those of an angel—
Her hair blew backward and also to the sides
Into air that felt the way water feels
When at first the faucet cascades
Before the heat of hot has time to warm.
She was not sure where she was going—
The going was more important than the where—
Beating inside her was a heart
Burning inside was a feeling
Rising inside was a hope that
Waking was only the beginning.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: Lighthouse Hero
She called to him
Beneath a veil of night
When summer wore
Its hottest mask
Wax and dripping
Onto the earth
Leaving sticky puddles
Drenched and drying fast.
He was ill equipped
From skin to guts
No cape in his wardrobe
Or spectacles to hide his eyes
Paralyzed
By the fear–
No not the fear–
The knowing.
Knowing that his will
To fight for love
Was vacuum packed
And wrapped in moth balls,
It wreaked of age and of
The stench of desperate attempts
And falls–
Memories of unanswered calls.
Calls for him to be the one
The victor in the storm
Brimming to capacity
With strength enough to
Hold her heart–
At least her hand–
Across jagged tightropes
Stretching over pits of sand.
Quicksand questions
Lined with glue
Meant to close the chasm
Between expectation and
What is true–
Catechisms from the past
Never brought to light
Long enough
For queries to last.
What lasted was uncertainties
And now he paid the price
Not wanting to lose
Her
But unprepared to fight
All he could muster
Was a broken hero’s
Journey into night.
Night fell
Long past its time as
Summer solstice
Lazily drew its haze
Upon a sultry sky–
Like the afterglow
Of a camera’s flash
Imprinted behind the eye.
Eyes heavy with fatigue
Propped open by ambition
He pulled his jeans up high
Belted at the waist
Sat on the dew-drenched seat
Slicing through salt
Like he was a Sodomite Sculptor
Entering the competition.
A competition
Against himself
Against the doubt
Bubbling through
His tightening veins
Waking him from
Slumber of uncertainty to
Valor through adversity.
Adverse conditions
In the black
Gave way
As light he carried
Burned a path
Radiant as day–
Along the way he set it down
The dread that he had nothing to give.
He gave her a coordinate–
It was all he had–
A map written in the air
To help her find him
Approaching beneath a beacon
Brave and bright
Like a compass
More meticulous than starlight.
Starlight led her way
Across a stretch of sand
The edge of land
And water
Lapping against her skin
Deep and
Deeper still
She wandered toward the glow.
Glowing first as though a firefly
Small and far away
His vessel cutting through
The foam, mocking delay
For time no longer mattered
As slow their paths came near
He, soaked with ocean
She, doused in tears.
Her tears were anvils
From her soul
Releasing injured expectation
She felt her heaviness go–
Fly
Into the heavens
Where drafts outweighed
The currents swirling down below.
She never saw below
The hidden treasure trove
Inside his hidden space
The place
Where thought and emotion
Ruptured like burdened banks
To flood his heart and
Overflow–
Overflows of adrenaline
Like rain
Saturated and drowned his pain
Leaving only
In the boat
He and the lighthouse he kept
For her
A flame no longer detained.
No act of the Furies could detain
His passage toward her eyes
The two he knew without seeing
He could feel at the side of his neck,
Glimpse behind the pillow
Where once she lay
Inside his dreams
And–in the middle of day.
The glow began to grow
He rowed like a man
Pursued by death
And she
Released a laugh
That tore his heart
From two parts into one–
He dropped the oars so he could run.
He ran to just before her
Then stopped to etch her
All
Inside his mind
Where secrets forever kept
Could burrow, rest and hide,
"I came for you,"
He said–
She already knew
But she feigned a big surprise,
"I wondered at that
single point
upon the horizon growing
never knowing
whether I should run away
or stay."
"I am glad you stayed,"
He kicked some sand
Between his shoes
And cleared his tightening throat,
"Now that you have
would you allow
this reluctant pirate
to stay here, too?"
She blew out the candle
Burning above his face–
No need to keep it lit
Inside this place
Where journey’s end
Had come to rest–
"I never really lost you,” he said–
"Then I was never really lost."
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2026
Poem: The Us We Can See
I am stationed at a wooden table
the size of a reasonable thought.
It does not wobble.
This feels like a small mercy
after watching my Americano
sway back and forth on the last.
Here, the Americano steams steadily
as if rehearsing confidence,
dark, uncomplicated,
uninterested in my opinions.
I wear fingerless gloves,
a compromise between dignity and survival.
My knuckles remain unconvinced.
Winter returns again and again
through the green-painted door,
carried on the backs of coats,
slipping in at ankle height,
lingering like someone
who has already said goodbye
but remains.
A woman at the counter
counts her change twice,
the last of her pennies
now a relic of a simpler time
when 1-2-3 meant something more.
A man near the window
keeps turning his cup
until the logo faces forward,
forgetting the face
with every sip,
which ends with a new turn.
A familiar dance, a waltz?
Sip-2-3, sip-2-3.
A woman with wiry white hair
removes a bright turquoise hat,
carefully crocheted,
leaving one thread to dangle
from a curl.
The thread hesitates.
So does she.
Heavy oak chairs keep their positions,
pretending not to notice
who chooses them and why,
practiced at holding
what is briefly certain.
A barista with inked forearms
wipes the same spot again,
loyal to a principle I do not know.
The clock on the wall yawns
while declining comment,
stretching its hands
in a familiar reach,
analog-2-3, sameness-2-3,
predictable without irony.
I lift the white mug,
my fingers watching and ready,
and remember how warmth
asks to be held,
while cold does not.
—Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
A Fable: The Temple of the Red Crystal
By Jill Szoo Wilson
There was a cavernous room where shadows flickered in the glow and not-glow of a hundred candles. Deep in a forest where the trees had names and whispered among themselves, shedding their leaves sometimes in boredom, sometimes in spite, in the center of an island surrounded by a frigid ocean that looked like clouds and made the whole place seem to float in outer space.
The room belonged to a magician named Heichus, whose hands were arthritic with disappointment, false starts, and spells whose power never left the tips of his fingers.
Year after year, Heichus bent over a heavy wooden table, wiping dust and spider eggs away from the steaming liquids and vials that had become his companions. The dust he swept aside collected at the edges of the wood and fell to the floor on all sides, creating a pile so deep that, if it were snow, it could be shaped into an army of snowmen. Instead, the dust sat dormant yet lively with mites and burrowing mice and spiders hatching from the very eggs he brushed away. His table rose from the drifts like an iceberg from beneath salty seas, its tip the only part he ever really saw.
Among the vials and beakers that bubbled and hissed sat two crystals that glowed with a light almost imperceptible. Against the candlelight, their weak illumination looked like the last pulses of a dying firefly.
Both crystals were clear in their main element, but one shone with a faint blue, the other faint red. These small hues painted themselves across Heichus’ cheeks, thin and uneven, like paint that had already begun to dry. The candles and crystals, and the occasional pop of an ill-conceived mixture, were the only difference between utter forest darkness and sight for Heichus. He kept them on his table as if they were pets that needed his attention to live.
One night, while Heichus was reading from a brittle book of potions, schemes, and chemical riddles, he saw a spark out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and the red crystal began to shine more brightly.
Heichus widened his dark eyes and leaned toward it.
“Could it be?” he asked the stale air.
It had been years since he had seen the warm glow of the red crystal. He carefully moved the powders and liquids out of reach, picked up the crystal, and laid it on a cracked mirror that sat on his table. He set his hands on either side of the glass, lowered his head, narrowed his eyelids, and studied the glowing red stone from every angle. He was like David squinting at Bathsheba, unable to look away.
Heichus had never known the origin of the red crystal, but he had never forgotten its power. As he watched its glow creep into the lines of his face, he remembered himself as a younger man. He peered into the mirror beneath it and saw the beauty of his own youth. The red crystal had the ability to erase the marks of time, pain, and weakness, revealing the vibrancy and strength of any man who stood in its light.
Tears slipped out of Heichus’ narrowed eyes.
“It is,” he whispered to the air.
From aloneness to companionship, he travelled into his own reflection. His mind moved from remembering to feeling to believing the young man in the mirror. He walked around the room holding the red crystal to his face in one hand and the mirror like a fixture in the other. The longer he held the crystal, the brighter it glowed. The brighter it glowed, the clearer and happier and alive the eyes staring back at him.
Heichus danced with his own face. He laughed and coughed with delight. He asked the mirror, “Do you love me?” and the mirror answered with a silent yes as Heichus heard music in his heart. The mice at his feet rolled their black eyes. The spiders sat in rows with their two front legs crossed and watched the human spectacle.
Heichus moved with the speed of a young man. When his bones creaked or his back spasmed, he looked at his face in the mirror, splashed with red, and forgot the pain of his present.
After a night and day and night and day of sleepless frenzy, Heichus began his rituals. He blew out the flames of his candles, covered the powders and liquids, capped the vials and beakers, cleaned his teeth, drank his milk, and sank into the lumps of his old mattress. He placed the red crystal on the nightstand near his bed and propped the mirror behind it. He lay in the dark, seeing and then not seeing the young man staring back at him as sleep pulled at his eyelids. Exhaustion joined hands with inevitability, and Heichus was unconscious to the world.
His snores rose like crows looking for a darkened branch. The stale air was stirred by their wings and by a thin winter draft that found its way across the dust. The red crystal glowed and pulsed. The blue crystal wheezed and sighed its meager attempts.
As the earth turned toward midnight, the trees outside his room began to whisper.
“Years ago, when the red crystal shone with power, Heichus cut many of us down,” said one.
The older trees told the younger ones the story.
“Heichus grew large in his mind and proud in his hands,” they said. “He wanted to build a temple for the red crystal. His hands did the work of a thousand men while his eyes stayed fixed on his face in the mirror. The mirror even cracked under the weight of his gaze. He found his eyes again, one on each side of the crack, and kept chopping. He felled a thousand trees.”
A young tree asked, “Did he finish the temple?”
An old tree with branches bent toward the earth replied, “No. As he began to build the foundation, a great storm gathered over the forest and fell with terrifying fury. Lightning struck the foundation. It struck the bodies of our fallen brothers and sisters. It struck the red and blue crystals and stripped them of their light.”
The young one asked one more question, as young ones often do before sleep.
“Why did he want to build a temple for the red crystal and not the blue?”
“The blue crystal shows Heichus who he truly is,” the old tree said. “The red crystal shows him what he wants to see.”
With that, the old tree drew in a long breath, let it out, and fell quiet.
The forest, the magician, the mice, and the spiders hummed with peace, the way wind hums as it crosses the face of the sea. The world was still. Their memories slept inside their dreams.
Just before the sun lifted its fingers to begin the morning, something rattled on Heichus’ table.
Heichus opened one eyelid, then the other. He looked into the mirror at his bedside and smiled at himself. The red crystal rolled its light across his face like a cat rolling in a sprawl of sunlight. Heichus beamed and groaned and laughed and began speaking poetry to his reflection.
His rhyme was interrupted.
The blue crystal trembled again. This time, its motion took on another kind of life. The light at its center began to glow. At first, it was slow, almost imperceptible. Then its hue gathered strength and lifted into the air, disturbing the stale particles of the room with small touches of blue.
Heichus bellowed a low, wordless shriek. The blue crystal had pulled his gaze away from his face in the mirror, and that filled him with rage.
He leapt from his bed, the red crystal clenched in one hand, the mirror clutched in the other, and ran to the table. He began to mix and stir. His powders and liquids bubbled, hissed, and burst. For years, he had stood at this table for one secret purpose. He wanted to create a potion that would break, smash, or incinerate the blue crystal into a trillion useless pieces he could bury deep beneath the earth.
His hands moved from vial to vial, not carefully but feverishly. His alchemy turned into reckless combinations. His old objective rose inside him again, strong and cold as the temple walls he had once tried to build. He worked and panted. Saliva gathered at the sides of his mouth.
He watched only his hands and the elements on his table. He did not dare lift his eyes to the mirror, did not dare see his face in the light of the blue crystal as it climbed into the air. He knew that if he did, the blue light would strip him of the beauty he clung to in the red.
He felt the arthritis in his hands flare. He felt his lungs fill with the weight of tears and phlegm and regret, all pressing upward into his throat. The stale air began to shine with purple as red and blue stretched outward into wisps and smoke. Heichus closed his eyes and slammed his vials together, causing bursts of fire, both hot and cold, that licked his skin and stole his breath. Pain and relief chased each other through his body. Tears came. Heichus tumbled to the floor.
Through many summers and winters, he had sat and stood and slept in this room, trying to find a way for the red light to swallow him into its reflection. Now he faced his failure and wept into the stale air.
“I am no magician at all,” he said.
The red and blue crystals vibrated. They shook and rolled across the tabletop while Heichus cried on the floor.
“Come what may,” he whispered.
Beams turned into shafts, which turned into streams of colored fire that filled the room, red and blue and then violet. Completely defeated, sobbing, and cut off from his own heart, Heichus reached his hand through the chaos and grabbed for the mirror. His hands shook with fear, confusion, stubbornness, and hatred, yet he fought against his pride and pulled the mirror to his face.
The storm of violet rattled the room, spilled into the forest, and swept across the cloudy ocean. In its center, Heichus forced himself to look.
To see.
His face was marked by both youth and age, both wishes and realities, both dreams and waking. His breath came hard. His joints stung. His veins throbbed with obsession, desire, and a long habit of wanting. His eyes filled, not with blood this time, but with tears that felt heavier than blood. In one still moment, where fantasy and reality met in the air, his voice found a clear, steady line.
“I see,” he said.
With those words, the storm dropped. The wind and sound and fury crashed to the ground, shook the earth, and stopped, the way a tornado finally lifts and leaves behind both destruction and newness. The red and blue crystals gave a last faint puff of light and fell dark.
Heichus stayed where he was, listening to the quiet settle around him.
Outside, the trees felt the stillness return. They did not cheer. They did not mourn. They simply adjusted their branches, as trees do, and continued to grow.
In the years that followed, when the younger trees asked about the strange magician in the stone room, the oldest among them answered like this:
“Heichus loved the light that showed him what he wanted to see more than the light that showed him who he was. That is why he suffered. Hear this and keep it close. A man may chase illusion all his life, but truth will wait longer, and when it comes, no one can face it for him.”
Poem: Opposite Sides of the Wall
I wrote this poem after visiting Berlin in 2015, where I was fascinated by the messages people had left on the remains of the Wall. This piece was inspired by one of those messages.
From the highest story
Of a building gray and cracked
Peer two eyes
Through dusty window panes
Pestered by a mosquito
Flying along the edges.
Below the eyes
A hand
Holding tin
Filled with coffee
Cold and strong—
A cigarette burning.
The fog of stagnation
Fills the room
As one wisp of smoke
Links arms with another
A silent dirge
Circling like vultures.
Her gaze is blank
She closes her eyes
Then opens them wide
Each closing a respite
Followed by
Disappointment.
She sighs
She coughs
She smiles for a moment
As the mosquito
Bumps against the glass
Bruised and trapped.
Above her head
Noisy neighbors shout
The song of frustration
Rings out and falls
Pulled by gravity and
By doubt.
She begins to hum a tune
She has not heard
Since she held a doll
Inside chubby arms
And kissed its head
With sugary lips.
Her raspy alto
Lays itself on the notes
Her Now
Transposes the music
From major to
Minor keys.
The mosquito brushes past
Her hand
And then lands and
Sticks his needle
Into her skin—
She observes the transaction.
A flashing light—
Her gaze arrested
Handcuffed to a mirror
Reflecting the sun a
A Morse Code message
.-.. --- ...- .
Which translates, “Love.”
She dunks her cigarette
Into her mug
Shakes her hand
The mosquito falls
Disconcerted but
Full.
She strikes a match
Holds it to a candle
Thick and matted
Like a paint brush
Spotted with colors
Dried from previous use.
A thin line rises from the flame
Gentle in its approach
And dancing in the haze—
She lowers and raises her hand
.- .-.. .-- .- -.-- ...
“Always,”
She replies
In this expression
They devised
From opposite sides of
The wall.
She blows out the fire
Puts her hand to the glass
Closes her eyes and
Kisses the air
As though it is
The last kiss in the world.
He lifts his fingers
Catches her lips
In mid-air—
Hungrily brings them down
Pressing their sweetness hard
Against his own.
The moment has passed
But their love
Will last—
Reach beyond time and space
Breaking past
The Wall.
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2015
Did You Think You Were the Only One?
A probably true tale about order, ambition, and the secret lives keeping the city running while we’re busy thinking we do.
Men with briefcases move up and down the streets like ants: all in lines, moving this way and that. Scouts sent forth from their secret dwellings, with secrets at their sides and secrets in their minds. They rush into the world to gather and to hunt, and when the day is done they hold their provision over their heads, like ants, but also like African women carrying water back to their children.
All is a race, if you think of it thus.
In the shadowed jungles of the sewer holes and pipes that run wild under the city, there is another kind of race. As the suits and ties vibrate with the ticking of the clock above, there are men and women of valor whose orders have been pecked out by feats of daring and strength. Yellow eyes, but sometimes green, flash through the underground tunnels and make plans for the sun-filled above.
The cats run the city below the city, and there is nothing we can do to stop them.
“I call to order the weak and the strong; everyone has their place. Some of us thin and some of us fat, all are fit to run the race.” Garrin’s voice was loud: a little too loud, to be honest. It rose into the echoing chambers of the 27th District of the sewer line and fell flat with self-importance, but also boredom. Garrin was wry and dry and not at all shy, which is why he was elected to the position of Mayor.
Their voices and fur fill the underground roads. If you don’t believe me, just ask them yourself.
Camille, a mostly white cat, lay on the recently swept floor and licked her right paw. “Garrin, I need to be given my daily task now because I have to be home early this evening. One of the humans I live with keeps feeding my kittens milk, which is giving them diarrhea, so I want to be home in time to feed them myself.”
“I know what you mean,” said Fluffy McHairball (a name given to her by a female human with no imagination at all). Fluffy continued, “My kids are growing up without me, Garrin. You’re giving us too much to do.”
Garrin laughed out of the corner of his mouth as his tail wagged back and forth, giving away his annoyance. “Ladies, please. I can announce the daily tasks with speed and efficiency as soon as you stop complaining.”
Camille did not appreciate Garrin’s belittling tone. She lowered her ears, looked away, and wrapped her tail around herself. “Spoken like a man whose kittens are grown,” she whispered. The other women around her chuckled and rolled their eyes.
Ignoring Camille and the attention she drew, Garrin began to announce the daily tasks to the cats under his charge, in alphabetical order, of course.
“Anthony, I need you to target the garbage bins outside the seafood restaurants today. As we are all aware, I had to fire Catpernicus last week because his was the seafood beat and he was woefully lazy, thus, the embarrassing shortage of seafood in our storage bins.” Anthony stood like a soldier, ready and willing to carry out his newly given orders.
“Yes, sir,” said the young Anthony, whose voice creaked with puberty when he spoke.
“Bartholomew,” Garrin continued, “you’ve done well on your rounds as of late, so I am promoting you to the Starbucks run. We need you to carry as many of the cup sleeves back as possible because, let’s be honest, they are fun to play with and they work well as portable scratchers.”
“Garrin, you’ve got to be joking!” interrupted Fluffy. “The humans may not mind depleting the forests for such waste, but we do not need to be a part of the madness by collecting their bad choices.”
Garrin’s tail began again to wag unconsciously with annoyance. “Fluffy, please. If you are ever mayor (which I doubt), you can make the decisions. As you know, we have brought your grievance to the Board of Governors, and they have settled the issue. The cup sleeves are useful to us, and we are not the ones cutting down the trees. Can I please continue so you can all begin and end your day in a timely manner?”
Fluffy yawned in disgust and then licked herself in spite.
Feeling the weight of their insubordination, Garrin listed the rest of the daily tasks in quick succession and then ended their meeting with the familiar chant:
“Go forth into the streets, the weak and the strong, everyone has their place. Some of us thin and some of us fat, all are fit to run the race.”
The young cats exited the tunnels with fervor, and the older cats sauntered into the shadows with their tails pointing high in the air, in Garrin’s general direction.
Did you think we were the only ones who daily race about like ants? I hope you will accept that sometimes you are wrong.
Camille’s eyes squinted as she climbed into the sunshine. The day was warm, and the sky was bright blue, the way it often is when spring blankets the earth. She liked the way the warmth of the sun sank into her coat and how the steamy cement of the street felt under her paws.
“Climb the highest branch of the highest tree and loudly cry,” she repeated her daily task into the air around her. “How embarrassing,” she said to herself. “And I am sure to break a claw.”
Camille’s task was the most loathed of the daily tasks, more of a monthly task really, but someone had to do it. Today it was her turn. The objective of the task was simple: it served as a test of the emergency services at their disposal. “This is only a test,” Garrin’s instructions replayed in her head.
It would be horrible if one of the kittens ever jumped onto a tree and ran to the top only to find that the local Fire Department had silently decided they would no longer be saving furry, four-legged babies from the highest branches. So today, Camille was charged with the job of testing their emergency system. “For the children,” she reminded herself.
As she trotted up and down the streets, through human legs covered with denim, under long cotton dresses that smelled like perfume, and around strollers filled with crying babies, Camille looked for the highest tree.
“Hi, Camille,” said Rupert, an overweight English Bulldog, as she walked along her path.
Camille answered with her ears held high, “Hi there, Rupert. Nice collar. Is it new?”
“Ah, Camille, that is what I love about you. You’re so observant. And nice to observe, if you know what I mean. If only we were the same species. If you know what I mean.”
She knew what he meant.
“You’re a charmer, Rupert! Have a nice day.”
Rupert passed her and then turned to watch her as she sauntered away.
Moments after she passed Rupert, Camille spotted a tree that towered above most others along the sidewalks within her district. It stood across the street near one of the many Starbucks along this road, and she watched for a moment as Bartholomew pranced away from the garbage can outside the door. He was carrying three cup sleeves between his teeth, and crumbs of a scone fell from the sides of his mouth. “Garrin will be so pleased,” she thought to herself.
After looking both ways, which is the number one rule in their employee handbook called Roadkill: A Manual of Safety and Instruction, Camille headed toward the tree.
Camille sat at the base of the tree and looked up. She closed her eyes for a moment and enjoyed the breeze that blew past her nose in the shade of the leaves. She could hear the sounds of the city street, the honking cars, the women clicking about in their high heels, and the men talking to ghosts on their Bluetooth devices, and she swayed to the rhythm of the cacophony. She could smell the bread newly baked in the bakery and the hint of ground coffee wafting onto the sidewalk from inside the Starbucks. Camille took in a deep breath through her nose and released it out through her mouth, a moment of meditation and being present.
It is good to pause and enjoy the moment.
Camille stretched out her two front paws and stretched deeply into her back paws before calmly and aptly climbing the highest tree. She had done this many times before. Once she reached the top, she lifted her voice even higher. “Meow!” she called. And then again. And again. Camille’s body was mostly hidden by the network of branches and leaves surrounding her, which gave her the courage to sing with volume and flair. To be honest, she had a great singing voice.
Suddenly, a shriek filled the air, breaking into the cacophony of sound on the city streets, and the sunlight was joined by hues of red and blue. The cars stopped honking, the women stopped clicking, and the men exchanged their long sentences for pleas to “wait” and “hold on.” The fire truck came screaming down the road, and Camille felt proud of her performance among the leaves that danced around her.
Within a matter of minutes, a particularly handsome fireman was lowering Camille from the tree and placing her paws gently on the warm sidewalk. Sounds of applause filled the air like a symphony conducted for a hero. The fireman blushed, Camille rubbed a “thank you” against his leg, and both trotted off in separate directions, pleased with the jobs they had done.
We all feel proud to have done our jobs well. Oh, did you think it was only you?
Her daily task completed, Camille felt free and content. She thought of strolling home, but realizing dinner time was still hours away, she made her way down a side street that led to the park.
A grassy knoll filled with light saw Camille walking his way, and he called for her to spread out atop his softness.
Nature speaks its desires and enjoys the companionship of those who listen. If you listen to it, you will know what I mean.
Camille lay in the center of the grassy knoll, careful not to dip her tail into the water below, and closed her eyes. She rolled her head back and forth to enjoy the shades of orange and yellow and red frolicking behind her eyelids. She could feel the heat of the ground on her back and the heat of sun on her stomach. She breathed in through her nose and released through her mouth, in and out, in and out, until her consciousness slipped into dreaming.
As she slept, the world around Camille continued to huff and to puff, like a train on a track with a destination to reach. Men with briefcases moved up and down the streets like ants, all in lines, moving this way and that. Scouts sent forth from their secret dwellings, with secrets at their sides and secrets in their minds.
Did you think you were the only one?
© Jill Szoo Wilson, 2025
Jill Szoo Wilson 