by Sarp Sozdinler Max Fleischmann Someone’s shadow stalks me on a rainy day. Asks me out on a candlelit dinner with saffron rice. Folds herself into the steam rising off my tea. Twists my bedsheets into folds. The shadow knows I’m obsessed with Patti Smith’s Horses. Shouts DANCE LIKE YOU MEAN IT. Bounces on the couch like a kid. The shadow calls me her oversized mermaid. Orders bánh mì a little too spicy for my taste. Tips in fives and tens. Parties past dawn. Blows in my ear

by Sarp Sozdinler Hans Isaacson WHO: The girl, eight going on nine, half-Assyrian, half-blind, born in the north bend of Southeastern Anatolia, a daughter to Aisha Maria Rohan, by way of Raqqa, by way of her father’s motherland, formerly a struggling second-grader, now a farmhand to her grandparents, lies sidelong on the side of a dirt road, her arms scissored backward, her head a porcelain doll lolling in a puddle of rainwater slowly reddening around the edges, the rivulets