Mileva Anastasiadou

The Fantasy of Violet Rose

Violet Rose is not a flower, although she’d rather be one. Violet Rose is a girl, who looks like a boy, who looks like a flower. She’s old enough to be a woman, yet she isn’t and she will never be. 

We first met at school. She spent her time daydreaming, while I remained focused in class. Despite my efforts, she was the one to gain the sympathy of most teachers. Her soft manners, her pixie haircut and floral dresses made a strong impression wherever she went. I longed to learn the sad story hiding behind her melancholic eyes. She shrugged and walked away when I asked, like she denied access to her mind. I wasn’t persistent, yet I kept watching her from afar. I secretly envied her flowery predisposition, her individuality. I’ve never been good at being myself. I’ve been good at finding patterns, repeating them to have the best possible results, I’ve been talented enough to mimic my way into success. Yet I didn’t mind that much, or so I thought. What truly mattered was my goal, while she seemed to lack ambitions, as if she didn’t need any. I didn’t know then, yet that happened because Violet had vowed to never grow up, while I, like most kids, was too impatient to wait. 

We lost touch with Violet but later in life, we met at a coffee shop. She was ahead of me in line, but I hadn’t noticed her. I only saw her face, when the cashier asked if we were together, so that he could move on to the next customer. We aren’t together, I said, but what if we were, I thought. I took my coffee and looked discreetly her way from time to time, for I couldn’t avoid wondering how our life would be if we were together. She then approached me and looked me right in the eye. She hugged me as if we had been best friends in high school, as if we hadn’t only exchanged a couple of words during our school years. I instinctively pulled back and laughed inside for a while. I didn’t know what others saw in her. What I saw in her. Or is it we all secretly regretted growing up?

*

Violet Rose is not a flower, despite common belief. Yet she smells like one. She smells like violets and roses. She does that on purpose, to confuse people who take her for a flower and then treat her like one. 

She’d only settle for a job that allowed her to stay young, she said. She never liked the idea of growing up. She was the female version of Peter Pan, only she never realized what she’d miss, escaping adulthood, I thought. Violet hated moralistic tales. Otherwise, she loved fairy tales. In fact she lived in one of her own. Maturity is overrated, she’d say. She’d rather be a rock star, for Violet plays the violin, but went into advertising instead. It was easier and Violet didn’t like trying too much.

On our first date, I had carefully chosen a bouquet of roses for her. She gave it back claiming it hurt her to see herself multiplied, then cut in two. She wasn’t only Rose, but also Violet, she said. It would have been nicer if I had found violet roses. That’s close to impossible, I told her, thinking that’d make her upset, but Violet’s face brightened up as she said: sure, there’s only one me. 

Back then, we were all in a band. Or dreamt we were. We dreamt we had a band of our own, like others before us wanted a house, a job or a family. So, we had a band and she decided on the name: Magic Dandelions Magically Arise. Like ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, she said, only more contemporary. That was a song, I objected, not the name of a band. She rolled her eyes like she didn’t care. Like I went into details and she never liked details. 

Truth be told, I wasn’t into the Beatles at the time. I was more into Violent Femmes. Funnily enough, I had my herpes simplex infection manifested for the first time that year. When the doctor mentioned herpes, after thoroughly examining the blisters on my upper lip, I felt ashamed, like I had done something wrong. Then came the song. I insisted we played it every time we met, only now though I realize the reason; I didn’t know yet but in hindsight, I was happy like a blister in the sun. For that was the summer we fell in love. 

She didn’t like Violent Femmes. Violet didn’t like violence, not even in a band name. She preferred playing the Beatles. And she whispered the lyrics: ‘Cellophane flowers of violet and green’, she’d say.  I once told her the flowers were yellow and green but that didn’t change much. She went on singing the wrong version. She went on doing her thing, like she always does. 

*

Violet Rose is not a flower, despite what her name suggests. She’s a girl, refusing to grow into a woman. 

I’m not sure when we grew apart. Violet would be the manic pixie girl to save me so I could save her and so on. We’d end up into that vicious circle of saving each other endlessly, like it usually happens in books and films and songs, only fate chose otherwise. What had been a dream wasn’t enough anymore. Like the clothes I wore twenty years ago now seem ridiculous, although I remember feeling confident wearing them back then. What I think is that pop culture sustained the connection between us, only the connection faded and that pop culture lingers on for a while longer, until it will also fade along with us. So, feelings change. Opinions change. Love goes away, only some people can’t stand change. Especially those who refuse to grow up. 

Violet now stares into the void, holding a glass of vodka with her two hands. She whispers sweet lullabies in my ear and I hear her violin for a while, only I know it’s nostalgia acting out on me, for she can’t play anymore. She’s that weak, only this time it’s true. I can’t blame her pixie haircut, her floral dress, her otherworldly voice, or her trembling hands. She claims she wishes to defeat death but she’s tired of fixing things all the time. I demand she lets me help her, but she insists she’s beyond repair. She smiles as if she doesn’t mind. She’s well prepared, she says, before closing her eyes. 

*

Violet Rose is not a flower, for flowers die and she’ll live forever. She’s delicate and fragile and arrogant, the way Little Prince’s rose was delicate, fragile and arrogant. But that rose died while she has earned her way into eternity. She’s Winona Ryder in Autumn in New York, only we’re the same age. She’s all girls in supporting roles, in films made by men who feel nostalgic. Violet insists she’s not a flower, that she never had a sad story to tell, her eyes weren’t melancholic, claiming I made her a flower without her consent. She has entrusted me with her memorial account, only she’s not certain anymore. I find that sweet, I tell her. Entrusting someone with your death is the greatest act of love. I gave her the role I needed her to have, I loved a fantasy instead of her, she now claims, regretting her decision, but it’s too late. I know well other people provide the context of our lives, only Violet will never accept that. She’ll claim her freedom forever, she says. She’ll destroy my narrative in the end, she yells on her deathbed, only I’m the one who survived to tell the story and my story will live on for it’s the story of the winner. 

Violet Rose is a flower. A ‘cellophane flower’ of violet and green, lingering over my head. Or a magic dandelion that magically appeared under my feet, through the cement, on my porch, the one I crashed stepping on it, unwillingly, or so I claim and people believe me.

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Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece. A Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as Gone Lawn, Litro, Jellyfish Review, Queen Mob's Tea House, Moon Park Review, Okay Donkey and others.

Lisa Allen

Quantum Blues

I hid behind a trash can when Schrödinger cornered me in the alley. His gloved hands found me anyway—how could they not? This is his thought experiment. He picked me up under the ribs and folded me into the crook of his elbow, gripping my back paws. He patted my head, said “Nice kitty.” I let him carry me into his lab. What else could I do? When Schrödinger lifted me into the air, I stared into his chalk-scrawled blackboard, occult rills of numbers tangled with letters and tridents and triangles. I looked down into the maw of a steel box. I wriggled and hissed and fanged his wrist, spreading my paws wide, but Schrödinger’s strong hands tucked them back together. He maneuvered me into the box. I took note of a flask, a hammer, a radioactive-looking substance, and a Geiger counter before the lid slammed and locked. Everything has been darkness since then. I try not to disturb anything. I try to sit still but my legs cramp and I must lift myself, stretch my body subtly up and down, side to side. They say tight dark spaces will break the mind eventually. I will not deny that I’m losing it. I don’t know whether I’m dead or alive; neither does Schrödinger. If he cared, he would have opened the box a long time ago.

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Lisa Allen is pursuing an MFA in fiction at UMass Boston, where she teaches Introduction to Creative Writing. She is also a freelance journalist covering topics ranging from finance to science. Lisa has attended a writing residency at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, New York. Look for more of her fiction in Kestrel, Levee Magazine, and Construction Literary Magazine. Find her on Twitter: @LisaAllenNY. 

Niles Reddick

Not All that High

As I viewed a historic collection of Appalachian photos with the Dean of the College during my all day faculty interview, the Dean whispered through her cupped hand her aunt had been a snake handling holiness preacher in the North Alabama Mountains. I knew I would fit as a faculty member at the College because my own aunt had collected road kill and made art and I shared that with the Dean. We both had a nice laugh.  That was the point in my interview that made me feel better about higher education not being all that high. 

While I was happy to get an offer and have landed a job in Tennessee, my earlier interviews taught me a lesson in what higher education. I had explored leaving the South for time in the Northeast and did a phone interview with a small New England university. At the end of the call, they asked if I had any questions, and I commented I hoped they didn’t have difficulty understanding my Southern accent to which they replied, “Why, no, we listen to Country music here, too.”  

Another pre-screening interview with a search firm prefaced a question about diversity with “I know you’re from the South, but…” 

I shared the rich diversity experiences from the South and added, “Perhaps a Southerner like me would add diversity in the North.” 

She laughed and said I might be right, though I didn’t get a follow up interview. 

I even did an in person interview in West Virginia, where a committee member told me, “I don’t know if I can get used to hearing your Southern accent.” 

I was appalled, and when the offer came, I politely declined, choosing instead to hold out for a job in the South and stick to my region, its people, and their country accents, and where we can turn a one syllable word into at least three syllables, bless it and be proud of it. 

Like most of the college’s students, I’d been a first generation college student and had gone on for a Ph.D.  I often felt like an imposter in higher education and often feared someone would find my transcript and expose an “F” grade I got in Algebra before finally passing it with a “B”, but what they didn’t know was I had Pre-Algebra in middle school and had been taken off the college track, leaving me woefully unprepared for collegiate work. 

I also felt like they might see my unsuccessful attempt at a foreign language translation test I had been too afraid to take. I’d overslept the morning of the test and had an anxiety attack when I realized it. Passing two foreign language exams before I could graduate with a doctorate degree was a major stressor for someone who had only taken one foreign language in college and would not be remembered for a stellar performance in that class. Twenty five years later, I have about two nightmares a year that I failed the Spanish translation exam. I wake up, my shirt soaked from sweat, my heart beating too fast, and I run to the restroom to splash water on my face. Interestingly, I never took a Spanish class or exam. I took Italian and French, so I’m not sure why I dream that at all.

Mostly, I have felt I might be an imposter because I am practical and pragmatic, which doesn’t seem to fit with higher education. I was conditioned by family---mostly salt of the Earth farmers and blue collar workers who were more concerned about putting food on the table to feed their children, paying their bills, and giving thanks to a God, like them, who didn’t put up with no foolishness. More than once, this seemed somehow incongruent with higher education, with abstract thought and theory. 

Once, faculty members in the department fought over a textbook decision in departmental meetings, attacking each other personally. It didn’t make sense to me that their points of view had turned them against each other. In some cases, they didn’t speak for months. All they had to do was allow one group choose one book and the other group choose the second option. Both books covered the same material; the difference was the way in which the material was presented. 

The great irony was the faculty all shared another book that was sacred to them. I had noted multiple errors in that textbook, had written to the publisher, and never received a response. When the next edition came out, it had the same errors, and I wrote again. The second time I received an automated response. When the third edition came out, the book still had the same errors, and I realized other faculty didn’t notice or care, and the book company didn’t care about higher education either. They were simply attempting to boost sales, increase profit. 

I also recalled a faculty member who complained publicly via campus email to the President about the new mulch put out in the flower and shrub beds around campus when those funds could have been used for faculty salaries. The faculty member understood nothing about enrollment, public relations, development, much of which drives and funds all things at a college, but even more important, the little money spent on mulch wouldn’t make a dent in faculty salaries. 

I always felt if higher education collapsed, I could get a job mowing grass, bagging groceries, helping with funerals, and so on. I could do anything and could carry on conversations with poor, middle, or upper class people, no matter what their background. I had grown up in deep South poverty, sweating and fanning gnats.  We weren’t bottom feeders, but we were one paycheck away from the bottom.  

“They might be a little crazy, but they are mostly good” is what you might have heard from others about our family, and what I noticed about my students were they were a lot like me: first generation, poor, and rural. Some hadn’t even been out of their county or been to a city like Nashville, let alone somewhere like New York City. What knowledge they had of the world, they’d learned vicariously through the internet and television, and over time, I introduced them to great books and ideas. What struck me most about my teaching and their learning wasn’t their performance in my classes; it was that those students began to see commonalities between great books and ideas in their own isolated Southern lives and realized they weren’t imposters in higher education. The education they achieved wasn’t all that high, and while I felt less like an imposter over time, I never collected road kill and I never attended a snake handling church, but I wanted to from time to time.

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Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, two collections Reading the Coffee Grounds and Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies and in over two hundred literary magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader Magazine, Forth Magazine, Cheap Pop, Flash Fiction Magazine, With Painted Words, among many others.

Dana Robbins

NO ORDINARY CATS

“There are no ordinary cats.”
— Colette

Coffee and cats are the two necessities around which my life revolves. First thing in the morning, as I sit down to write, Dash, a gray tiger-stripe shorthair in his middle years, sits on my desk resting a paw or his head fetchingly on my keyboard. If I ignore him, he rolls on his back and waves his plump, irresistible belly at me. When the birds and squirrels are active in the backyard, we watch them out the window together. Dash makes ominous noises deep in his throat as if to hint at what he could do were he not confined to my home as a pampered pet. In reality, it is hard to imagine how this sociable cat, who greets our guests at the door and converses with me all day, could survive in the wild. 

We adopted Dash from a shelter without cages. It was a cat lover’s paradise, just big rooms full of cats. Dash was not the most beautiful cat, having short legs and a small head—in shape, he resembles an armadillo—but he won us over. After we were “introduced” to him, he followed us around as we toured, making a sound like “mer mer merp, merp, mer mer mer merp,” with a lilt like a question on the last syllable. Choose me, love me, he pleaded, and we did. Dash, in his early life as a stray kitten, was mauled by a Rottweiler and rescued by a good Samaritan who paid for emergency surgery, a history that explains Dash’s great love of people and his joie de vivre. The Dale Carnegie of cats, Dash comes out when we have company and circulates among our guests, winning over each one. He also takes a cross-country plane trip twice a year, without any impact on his good humor.          

In my writing office, there is a picture of another special cat, Midas, who came to me in grad school when I had my own apartment in New York City and wanted a cat to keep me company during long, dull study sessions. On a cold winter night, a classmate rescued him from an alley in Morningside Heights. She described him on the phone as a black-and-white longhair with the “sweetest green eyes.” She brought him to my door, but when I opened the cat carrier, a mangy-looking creature, with dingy long hair and terrified green eyes that oozed with a discharge, slunk out and, head down, crept away and hid under my bed. He emerged a few days later to spray my leather boots. I thought of how my wish for a cat had backfired and named him Midas after the mythological king whose wish to turn everything to gold led to disaster. My friends joked that Midas was turning everything to gold with his pee. My father teased me about my scruffy new pet. “How’s Midol?” he laughed. 

Soon, however, surgery (i.e., castration, sorry, Midas) fixed the spraying problem. Midas was a companionable cat who slept nestled in my armpit but still mangy until Don, the boyfriend who became my first husband, suggested that we give the new cat a bath. Midas did not protest as we put him in the sink and lathered him with cat shampoo, which turned a large round ball into a scrawny creature. After the shampoo, Midas sported a silky mane of shiny fur and a striking plumed tail. He became a handsome cat worthy of his regal name. He seemed to like being dapper and luxuriated during his regular brushings, rolling over so I could reach every spot. 

At that time, I acquired a roommate who brought with her a Himalayan fluff ball named Hans. Midas was not happy with this incursion, but clearly he was a lover, not a fighter. Don picked Midas up to comfort him, and from the safety of Don’s arms, Midas let out a ferocious hiss. After that the two cats tumbled playfully, Hans always trying to catch Midas’s tempting tail. As cowardly as Midas was vis-à-vis Hans, he was a regular Philippe Petit when it came to heights. Our apartment was seven stories up, and once we looked out to see Midas walking daintily along the narrow ledge outside the window. Fortunately, we were able to coax him back in. 

When Don and I moved to Brooklyn, Midas came with us. He preferred drinking water from a glass, and every morning as Don shaved, Midas jumped on the top of the toilet to enjoy a glass of water. When we had our first daughter, Liat, Midas learned to tolerate toddler kisses. Feeling that we had not filled our cat quota, we adopted a second cat, a rather dim calico. Vashti was a devoted and obsequious partner to Midas. She regularly groomed him by licking him on top of his head. Midas accepted these attentions with a look of noblesse oblige and disdain. I never saw him lick her. 

I was pregnant with my second child when amidst the jumble of our busy days, we noticed that Midas was losing weight. He was diagnosed with feline AIDS. Midas became so weak, he curled in a corner without moving as Vashti sat devotedly by his side. I was in my eighth month of pregnancy when we decided to end his pain by euthanasia. Nestled comfortably in Don’s arms, gentle Midas bent his silken head and breathed his last. Vashti went into deep mourning, sitting immobile for hours in the corner that Midas had chosen when he was ill. I did not properly mourn Midas as I wanted to think only happy thoughts for the sake of the child in utero. 

The next important cat in my life was Topanga, a magnificent Maine Coon tiger-stripe female who came to me after my divorce from Don. I adopted her for $32.00 through a pet service. An Italian cop from Staten Island brought her to my door. “She was my girlfriend’s cat. She left da cat when she walked out on me,” he said gruffly. He opened the carrier, and Topanga climbed daintily out. “I don’t have time for da cat. Her name is Shmoopie,” he added sheepishly, then was out the door in a rush as if afraid I might change my mind. 

The name Shmoopie did not do justice to her elegance. The cat had large green eyes, the refined bone structure of a supermodel, the tufted ears of a bobcat, a magnificent coat of silky fur, and an impressive plumed tail. When Liat, now twelve, came home and I told her the cat was named Shmoopie, Liat pronounced, “That’s pathetic.” We began discussing new names, and as we were watching the TV show Boy Meets World, we decided on Topanga, an exotic name for an exotic cat. 

To say Topanga was extremely neurotic would be an understatement. At every loud noise, her back arched and she skittered across the floor. Had she been a person, she would have needed a valium just to go to the supermarket. She was a poor eater except for one particularly expensive brand of cat food, Fancy Feast. However, like a good best friend, Topanga comforted me. When I lay on the couch, she would drape herself on the arm behind my head and reach down a paw to knead my neck, claws politely retracted, almost as if giving me a massage. She slept with me but never woke me in the morning. Instead, I would open my eyes to find her watching over me, winking a doting cat smile. When my mother babysat, she told me that, without fail, at 6:00 p.m., Topanga took up a post at the window to watch for me as I came home from work. As I climbed the brownstone stoop, Topanga would meow a hello, and by the time I opened the door to the apartment, she was there to greet me.

When I began to date, Topanga dated with me and had strong opinions about the men I brought home. Topanga was fond of my first serious post-divorce boyfriend, a clean, quiet man with a soft, mellifluous voice, whom no one else in the family liked. As we sat on the couch together and he reached over to hold my hand, Topanga slipped a paw between his fingers. When Steve, my second husband, came with his booming soccer coach voice, Topanga took an instant dislike to him. There was no love lost on Steve’s side either. It was almost like they were rivals for the privilege of sharing my bed. Topanga painted her feelings in urine all over the one piece of furniture Steve brought with him, a futon. Every day, she reminded the offending upholstery just how pissed off she was that Steve had invaded our perfect love nest. In time, they reached an accommodation when she discovered that Steve’s chest was the warmest spot in the apartment. 

When Steve and I left Brooklyn to move to Maine, Topanga seemed for a time a happier, more confident cat, proud of her expanded territory. Then a thyroid problem led to complications, and we came home to find her back legs paralyzed. It is possible she was poisoned by something she ate off the floor of our two-hundred-year-old house. Before we could get her to the vet, blood began to gush from her nose. We tried everything to save her. Three doctors and $2,000 later, Topanga was in the animal ICU in a hopeless condition. We decided to end her agony, and I asked for the opportunity to say goodbye. “She’s in great pain; she’s not the same cat,” the vet warned me. When they brought Topanga in, she was howling like a banshee. “Hi, Topanga,” I said in the special voice I used for her. She quieted instantly and let me stroke her ruff. As the doctor gave her the medicine that would end her life, I thanked Topanga for being such a loyal friend. I told her I never would have survived my divorce without her. I reminisced with her about the good times we had. I begged her forgiveness for letting her get so sick. I spoke for ten or twenty minutes with tears streaming down my face. Topanga’s sweet, soulful eyes said she understood and forgave. By the time the medication took effect and Topanga died, the vet was in tears, and Steve was so upset, he almost fainted. I was devastated and mourned Topanga through poetry and a small ceremony. Her ashes sit in a box on my bookshelf. 

The author Colette said, “There are no ordinary cats.” In some mysterious way, cats come to us when we need them, the way that Topanga came to me when I was newly single. Dash is sleeping nearby. If he was awake, he would say, “Mer mer merp,” with a rising note on the last syllable, which translates as “What about me?” He would remind me that life is lived forward, and the most important cat is the one in your lap right now.

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Following a long career as an attorney, Dana Robbins obtained an MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast program University of Southern Maine. Her first book of poetry, The Left Side of My Life, was published by Moon Pie Press of Westbrook, Maine in 2015 and her second book, After the Parade, was published by Moon Pie in 2020.  Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Dana lives in Bronx, NY and Palo Alto, California.