As I lay on this unholy bed, I am waiting. Waiting for my life to end and for those around me to follow. It turns out I was the master of my own fate, the puppeteer to all these marionettes and the face behind the veil. I am in more pain, not by my lacerations, but by the fact that my loving wife won’t be able to live on when I die. Hooked up to these tubes, I can only see her by my bedside. I cannot talk to her, this vegetative state has left me mute–only to wonder in my own mind what the afterlife has to offer.

       She approaches, wearing that lovely yellow dress I adore so much, the same lovely yellow dress she wore when I proposed. She looks as vibrant as the day I met her with eyes pigmented with the waters of an oasis, cheeks that resemble roses in a springtime bloom and a smile that encapsulates pure euphoria while reassuring the same for myself. But as she approaches, something is wrong. The hospital room appears to be dematerializing. It has begun, I am on the verge of death.

       I figured out that I am the creator, and the outside world is collapsing when the news on the television started playing nonsense. Historical events were jumbled together creating a cumbersome news story that did not add up. I had my suspicions growing up and always had this haunting feeling in my gut that the outside world only existed because I did. Thoughts raced through my head. If I made this universe then what about the other universes out there? Did I create those as well? Or do those worlds have their own creator? The idea of solipsism never rang truer than now. It’s  a shame that I figured this all out as I lay on this profane bed, profane because I realized there is no God. I am the designer and I created a world of hunger, demise, corruption, and filth. If only this conclusion came to me earlier, if only I knew that I created this world, maybe I could have thought of a peaceful one. Albeit, it is too late to reflect on my mistakes, the world has already been established and I figured out that I can’t change a goddamn thing.  

       As I lay in agony, my wife speaks to me, I try to listen but there is silence. Her beautiful red lips are moving, but nothing is spoken. Sound exists no more. Then I start to see the background disappear completely. The walls begin to crumble down, the chairs turn to dust, the floor fades away, and in its place, there is only black. In the corner of my eye, I see the other patient and his whole bed turns into a whirlwind, like a black hole. As though sucked up by a vacuum, the patient next to me is gone. There is nothing left to see except darkness, but my wife acts as the beacon of light in which I must follow. I can still smell her satisfying aroma while her euphoric smile and that lovely yellow dress give me a sense of comfort that I created something beautiful and pure.

       However, it won’t last. Her own dissipation begins at her legs and is rising. Her waist is next, but the disappearing act takes a right turn towards her hand that touches my face. I stare at her fingers as they agonizingly and slowly vanish. Each cell of her hand is plucked away while she moves her lips, her voice inaudible.

       Black wickedness surrounds me, but the light radiating from my wife still remains. As I stare, all I can make out is her torso and face. Then the torso vanishes like a magician’s grand finale, leaving a floating head for the audience to revel and applaud over.The rest of the head starts to wane and the only bright light comes from her glowing lips. I feel my eyes begin to water as I try to hide my emotions. This is it, this is the end. But then I see her smile and my intuition shifts. I try to bring my wife back, I don’t know how but I focus on every detail about her. I have every inch of her skin memorized. She starts to exist once more. Her torso is rebuilding itself. It is remarkable, the cells fit together like blocks, each going to its corresponding place. I see her bones, her intestines and then the skin begins to form. Then I hear a sound, it is a mechanical sound. A monotone and constant ring. Oh god! I am flat lining.

      The man in the bed turned to dust, only a dark void remained. That world existed no more, but somewhere in another universe, the man lives, and a lady in a lovely yellow dress reassures solace to the man with her euphoric smile.

Writer: Garrett Hanneken is a college graduate who has no idea what to do now. He enjoys reading stories with great and terrifying imaginations and looks up to the writers who push us to imagine.

Artist: Anita Almazan pursued her interest in art after retirement by taking classes at Fullerton College and other facilities.  The classes she attends include drawing, painting and photography. One of her goals is to become proficient with Photoshop and other software in order to incorporate these tools in producing interesting paintings.

I wasn’t yet five when it happened,
his touch lingers in my mind,
leaving scars behind, invisible to the naked eye,
I don’t say what he did to me, when asked,
I can’t,
there are stitches are over my mouth,

I ignore the pain his touch has left behind,
as it festers inside me,
But pain never whispers,
It only yells;

Thirteen,
the pain yelled so loud I couldn’t ignore it,
I wrote it off as a bad dream,
Even the scariest of dreams can be forgotten,
His sadistic touch cannot,

I enter the world of high school,
I’m afraid,
I already know I’m different from my peers,

Seventeen hits me like a bullet,
Piercing me with memories of the truth,
Him leering at my body as he watched me undress,
The memory of him on top of me,
It all haunts me,
like monsters under my bed,
The shame builds in my mind, as if I did something wrong;

At eighteen,
my friends spout ignorant words,
“only women can be abused” never men.

I know they’re wrong,
those words never leave my mouth,
the Stitches over my mouth keep my lips shut,
people say this horrid thing could never happen to men,
yet I’m proof they’re wrong.

Nineteen,
I see on television there’s a woman,
She’s been through my pain.

I feel for her I know her pain,
nothing will allow her to forget it,
women insist I cannot understand,
I do understand, even if I wish I didn’t.

My Twentieth year is like the calm before the storm,
Twenty-one the hammer falls,
Confessions pour out of me,
like blood from a knife wound,
I don’t care who hears my words, my sobs, my pain,
Only who’s there to catch them.

Writer: Ethan Dougan is the author of two poems, “A Person“ and “Stitches Over My Mouth.” These two poems are about his life and who he is as a person. His inspiration for “A Person” was simply him just venting his frustrations with today’s modern society and the overwhelming pressure of conformity, while “Stitches Over My Mouth” was a traumatic event in his life that he thought he could heal and overcome by sharing it.

Artist: Rebecca Mora is a self-taught artist who loves to take inspiration from the people and world around her.

I was sitting in the seat where many other family members waited to see the prisoner they came to visit. As I sat there waiting, I recalled how the social worker used to look at me with such pity when she would ask how I was feeling. I never told her the truth because I knew better.
These guards are anal about following orders and being at the check-in at the precise time, but when it comes to taking the prisoners to the visitation area, they take their time, as if to taunt them. The walk to the visitation area was familiar to me. Roughly every 50 feet, there was a gate to unlock and the next one would not open until the last one was shut. The fence was thick and the barb wire at the top made the sky look limited. After about ten doors, we got to the final gate where there were more guards analyzing each visitor with suspicion, as if the visitors were guilty of a crime by association. As the guard that led the group of visitors to the visitation room paged the guard on the inside of the visitation room, I looked up at the sky. The sun was bright and loud. There was a chilly breeze with patches of shaded clouds. It felt like winter in June. A large guard opened a heavy door for us, and we entered the visitation area. I chose the seat closest to the exit; it made me feel safer. The visitors took their seat and tried not to stare at each other. We were all there to visit a criminal. We could hear the inmates walking to the visitation area from the clinging of the chains, like the pictures in my history books of when slaves would be transported. I see him being processed to the visitation area through the bullet proof glass. He was wearing a bright yellow two-piece scrubs-looking outfit, with what were supposed to be white socks and slip-on Vans-like shoes. One chain was clipped on to his ankles, waist, and wrist while the other chain connected the line of men by the ankles and waist. As they were led into a separate area, they looked down until a guard instructed them to lift their heads. He saw me standing there and I saw his joy, that glow in his being as he cherished the fact that I was there, in his prison, in his hell. I half sympathized, and half justified – he deserves it, I thought. Many years ago, he was a monster in my dreams, but now, he’s a constant reminder that there is no happy family.
As the final guard pats him down and instructs him where to go, his eyes meet mine. His eyes are bold and deep. I stare at him and think this is my father. There is too much love and hate toward him mixed in the same crushed heart. How I hate him and love him at that very moment is maddening.
His chains were unlocked and he was told, ‘No touching the visitor, sit across from the visitor, hands on the table at all times, and ask for permission if you need to step away from the table. Understood?’ He responded with a ‘yes’ and a childish nod to assure the guard he understood. My heart tightened as the anger in me shifted from my father to the guard. I made it a point to meet the guard’s eyes thinking that, in doing so, I would subtly defend my father, but it had no effect.
My father proceeded to his entrance of the visitation area. My intentions were to tell him to his face ‘your actions fucked up my life’ and make him feel as bad as I have felt all these years. As I thought that, I looked at the dehumanized man walking towards me with such joy. This man controlled so much of how I had felt for so many years and to see the torture in his person and gleam in his eyes was wrenching.
His gaze had depth; I half wanted to hug him and half wanted to punch him. As he walked closer I could feel his happiness radiate through him, anxious to hug me even though he couldn’t. He stood across from me clearly allowing me to go in for a hug, like the last time I visited him with my siblings when I was nine years old, but I did not hug him this time. Partly because I was weary of what the guards would do and partly because I couldn’t bring myself to hold this man with all the latent love I refused to allow myself to feel.
After not seeing him for nine years, I thought the worst thing that could happen was breaking down in front of him and all the other people in visitation, but standing in front of him, at that moment, all I did was smile and he smiled back. I remembered how secure his embrace felt back when I was three years old. I remembered all those times I threatened boys not to pick on me because my father was going to kick their ass. I remembered who I painted him to be, as a child, this responsible and sensible man who loved his wife dearly but adored his daughter above everything else. I felt the knot in my throat swell and the tears in my eyes waiting for their cue to flow, as my lie came back to me. So much of my childhood revolved around him and his absence; the flare was lit. I turned – and walked away.

Before I went through the door, I looked back at him. He wore pain on his face and guilt on his shoulders with a hint of torment. I stood there as the officer waited for me to proceed. I turned away and the thoughts that raced through my mind were of my mother. She once told me my father loved me more than he ever loved anyone on this earth and, above everything else, he was still my father. My mother wouldn’t be too proud of me right now, walking out on my father. She took me to church and taught me to pray because I needed to know how to forgive. I understood her reason, but I wasn’t willing to do all the work – he could at least say he was sorry.
The next three hours I wept for him and because of him. All the memories of him beating my mother until there were puddles of blood on the floor, the endless nights I wept in strangers’ beds, the lasting damage to me and my siblings’ ability to build trusting relationships decided to tornado around me in the solitude of my truck. I had parked at the farthest end of the parking structure to be as far from the crowd of visitors as possible. This was something I did as a child as well, putting a distance between the conflict and myself. Backing away from the situation is safer, at least at the moment, I’d think. As I wept and acknowledged all the trauma, I could feel something in my heart was changing and I was scared. Facing my Father demanded courage I was not sure I had. Rather, I drove all this way because of rage, not courage. My heart was throbbing, and my mind was whirling with memories I hid away for so long. After cowering away for a while, I decided to show him my truth.
I walked back to the visitation check-in, trying to keep it together. The receptionist noticed the redness of my eyes and asked me if I was okay. I couldn’t vocalize my response, so I just nodded my head. The initial judgment was gone. I signed the forms and took off my shoes to walk through the metal detectors. I felt the receptionist’s sympathy emanate from her as I put my shoes back on. I walked towards the doors of the visitation area. The guard recognized me and opened the door. He told me it would take a few minutes to have the inmate come out again and that I only had 45 minutes left of the visitation. That fact was comforting.
I took a seat, the same seat, only now with the bravery I lacked the first time around. I waited roughly 15 minutes before I saw him through the bullet proof glass, again. This time he wasn’t so glowing; he was a pitiful scene. I was mad, and I knew it. Mad was safe because it provided a sense of courage. He stood at his entrance and walked to the table. He sat down with a caution I’d never witnessed in him before.
He met my eyes. “Hola…” was all he managed to say.

I had this sensation of joy escape me as I bashfully smiled. Then I quickly took it back by looking down. I was so mad at myself for slipping and confused as to why. I gained the needed determination and began the dreadful conversation.
With a stutter to my Spanish, I told him that he ruined my life. So that I may move forward with my life, I told him I no longer wanted any communication with him. As I spoke, the tears betrayed me and ran down my face as if trying to make a puddle, like the one my mother made. I stared at him dead in the eye anyway. He was smiling at me with a tenderness I could only interpret as him not taking me seriously. I rubbed the tears off my face and inhaled, then exhaled. I told him he destroyed my life and I hated him for what he did. I told him I hated how enslaved I felt by the pain caused by him 20 years ago. I confessed to him that I had never been fine. As a child, I told him I would become a lawyer and get him out of jail, but in reality I wouldn’t have done this. I said it only because I wanted him to be proud and not worry about me… because it mattered to me to make him happy. After those words, I broke down. The tears were no longer tears but a flood of sorrow just pouring out from nowhere and everywhere. I toiled to keep my sobbing as inaudible as possible and after some time I managed to breathe. I took in some breaths because I had to continue speaking. I was not willing to hold anything in any longer. I gained control of myself again and proceeded. I told him I forgave him for his ignorance and careless actions, but that I no longer wanted him in my life. That all my memories of him were too unbearable and to not call or expect to know about my life. The assertiveness I felt in that moment about my life was the first breath of air I felt was my honest truth.
I looked at him in search of a reaction, and he simply looked down at the table where my hands were crossed. He was analyzing the hairs on my arm and the ring on my finger. I watched him make note of the crease on my knuckles and my bitten nails. He looked at my face and took in the bareness of my skin, the length of my eyelashes, the thickness of my eyebrows, and smiled. It only made me angrier. I took in the moment for what it was because I had decided that I wouldn’t return. I allowed him time to think and speak, for the sake of being able to say I gave him a chance to.
He told me he understood and accepted that I had a lot of pain that needed to be expressed. It hurt him to know that he had pained me so much, but he could not contain the happiness he felt when he was allowed to be in my presence.
His Spanish was paced and deliberate, just like I remembered it. He shared that it has been hell what he has lived through and on various occasions he had contemplated suicide. The misery of what his life had become had only one piece of beauty and that is the existence of his children.
His demeanor still held strength and his words still wretched my heart. He said he would never be able to recuperate the lost time or erase his decisions, but he hopes that, one day, we would be able to forgive him and permit him a role in our lives.
Though I was visiting to dismiss him from my life, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to be as cruel as I recall him being. In my heart, I knew the harshness of my request, but it was my honest truth. In my smallest whisper I reiterated, ‘I don’t want you in my life any longer.’ My voice was broken and barely audible, but he heard me.
Again, he said he understood.

I first felt it in my chest, the heaviness was lifted, I had said my peace. He made my tears fall gracefully with a mixture of breakthrough feelings. His acknowledgement meant the world to me, but it confused me. I felt such love from him, just like my mother told me existed. For a moment, I had a glimpse of the possibility of an honest relationship with my father. Though that feeling was new to me, I still felt the agony.
There was still time left so I let him know how the family was doing and that we were going to be fine because my mother taught us well. He simply smiled with satisfaction. He said he knew my mother would make great adults out of me and my siblings. I felt a note of bitterness when he mentioned my mother, as if he should be forbidden to even think of her. My mother occasionally says she forgives him, but when she is sad, she says she hopes God forgives him, because she has tried. Growing up, I understood her sentiment but for different reasons. Even now, I wanted to love this man with all my heart, but I couldn’t dismiss my honesty in requesting his absence from my adult life. Marianne Williamson once wrote, ‘until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is.’ As much as it made my chest tighten to think of all the damage my father had caused, I couldn’t be as cruel to him as he was to me because then I’d continue the cycle of abuse that had enslaved me. At the end of the day, I did love this man, though I hate who he has been.
The guard announced the time was up. My father looked at me with ache and regret as he hesitated to stand up and face the guard. I remembered the day the cops came to our house to take him in. I was only three years old but I remember, and it felt like that day all over again. As he was led to his exit, I stood and walked towards the visitor’s exit door. I turned back one last time thinking I forgive you, as if he would feel it if I kept thinking it. My father did not look back for me, he was instructed to face forward in the opposite direction, and I felt his agony that very moment. His prison felt like my prison, only I was being released from my cell and he was being led back to his.
After letting the visitors out, the door to the visitation area slammed shut as if to announce there will be no going back. With every stop and go from each gate on the way out, I looked back just in case I got a glimpse of my father heading back to his cell. I did not.
As I walked back to my truck, with every breath between my sobs, I whispered, ‘I forgive you, I forgive you … I love you Dad.’

Writer: Martha Monge is a Fullerton College student currently working on her B.A. in Creative Writing. This piece is the first of many she intends to publish. She poured her heart out on this one, and it was difficult for her to write it, but she hopes it advocates forgiveness and sheds light on scenarios society tends to omit or disregard.

Artist: Cassandra Jimenez is a third year student at Fullerton college. She plans on completing her Associate’s Degree in Art and plans on transferring to a four-year university to receive a Bachelor’s Degree. Cassandra has loved art since she was small. But, her interest in art increased when she took intermediate and advanced art in High School. She prefers water color painting but also enjoys drawing and even creating murals. Her love for art is displayed in her work.

      I used to go to church every Sunday. My parents raised me in the American Baptist setting, which meant that I was forced out of my warm bed early every Sunday morning, wearing shirts with collars that made my neck itch, and black dress pants that soaked up the humid California heat. Being the church organist, my mom was connected to a lot of posh, proper Christian people. Every Sunday, I had many older people come up to me and strike up conversations about how big I’d grown, or how cute my blonde hair was, or, the most annoying of all, how much I resembled that one kid from the early Home Alone movies. Sunday morning was full of singing children’s hymns, learning Bible stories through Velcro puppets as the Sunday school teacher taught us how important it was to love one another no matter what, and wondering what was for lunch after the long talk from the pastor in big church. After the church pastor lectured about boring adult things, my mom would lecture me and my siblings separately at home.

     “There are three things I will not tolerate. Killing someone. Doing drugs. And Homosexuality,” my mom would scold.

      That last word shocked me, because it was so rare to have any version of the word sex spoken in my house, and I was also attracted to boys. I’d always attach myself to the characters that you’d typically see on the cover of Teen Beat Magazine. My childhood fantasies always stayed fairly innocent. I’d sometimes imagine that Jonathan Taylor Thomas and I were best friends, and he’d call me on the phone to chat about how cool the new Super Nintendo was: “Can you believe that controller? It has four buttons; what are we going to do with all of those?” We’d laugh, and simulate wars with the G.I. Joe action figures that had been passed down to me from my older brothers, and he’d compliment the tactics that I had stolen from the Power Rangers when they narrowly defeated the latest monster Rita Repulsa created in the latest episode. Sex was a risqué topic, something I knew not to bring up, and if it was mentioned, it would make my mother’s face turn bright red as she tripped over her words while trying to change the subject.

    Thanks to my close-minded parents, I learned about sex on my own for the first time in Junior High School. The faculty gathered all the boys of my grade into the cafeteria and had us sit in a cluster on the cold-and-always-dirty-checkered tile floor while the teachers played a video about puberty that contained some words that made all us boys giggle. The teachers had to keep telling us to “Quiet down.”  They awkwardly tried to describe natural “urges” we might have, and we should talk to our parents about how to handle them, but I knew deep down that wasn’t a possibility. There was no chance of bringing that subject up in my house.

   I was twenty years old when I started to date boys, and the pressure of sneaking around to see them started to become cumbersome. I knew one day my mom would ask a question I hadn’t prepared an excuse for.

  “Who are you going to the mall with?” she’d ask.

  “Just a friend I met at work,” I’d always reply, my heart beating rather fast. I was terrified of getting found out. What if she decided to ship me off to one of those horrible reform camps I’d read about on the internet? What if she kicked me out? No, I decided. She wouldn’t kick me out. The church teaches us to love and accept one another, I thought. I was lying to myself and my family, and I couldn’t have that. I decided it was time to come clean.

    I wrote her a note in the afternoon while I was getting dressed for my job at the local Mervyns. My hand shook uncontrollably while I wrote, the letters turned wonky, as if a child had written them.  

     Dear Mom,

                  I don’t know how to tell you this, but I can’t lie about it

                 anymore. I like boys, not girls. Please don’t hate me.

                 I didn’t choose to be this way.

    I folded up the note, walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and packed myself a meal, my mind racing as I wondered if I would still have a home once I got off work. Looking at the trash can, I seriously considered ripping the note into a hundred tiny pieces and throwing it out. I wrote the note; I couldn’t chicken out now. Note in one hand, meal in the other, and spare clothes in my backpack, I walked out the front door, stuck the note under the wiper blade of her blue Toyota Corolla, and started anxiously walking down the street to work.  

    It was an agonizing eight hours at work. I folded t-shirts, picked up shoes, and awkwardly smiled at customers in the failing store. I was walking home from work at a super slow pace, passing by the homeless man on the side of the mall. I couldn’t help but wonder if he had any room in his sagging cardboard box for a homeless gay man. I got lost in the worst-case scenario, as my feet did most of the work.

     Before I even realized it, I was standing at my front door. I took a deep breath and walked in the house. I heard the clanging of pots and pans coming from the kitchen. As I walked by, I saw my mother with yellow cleaning gloves on, scrubbing the shelf where the pots and pans lived. She was scrubbing so hard that I worried she might snap the wooden shelf in half. I walked down the hall to my room, closed the door, and turned on my computer and sat down at my desk.

     There was an email from my college pastor. My heart pounded as I opened it.

              Hi, Marty.

              Your mom called me this afternoon.

     Oh, perfect. My mother’s being gossipy. Now the whole church probably knows. I continued reading.

              I just want you to know that I care about you, and want the best for you, no matter what. Being gay is not something the Bible teaches, and I hope we can work through this so you can be happy.  Best, Troy.

      I stared at the email as my mom pounded on my door.

      “Come in,” I answered.

      She came in and sat on the bed, my note in her hand. I turned to face her, hand in my lap.

      “Ummm,” my mom started. “I don’t know what to say about this. How can you like boys?”

      “I don’t know, mom. I just know that I like boys, and not girls like I’m supposed to.”

      “How can we fix this?” my mom asked.

       “I don’t think there is anything to fix, mom; I’m not broken,” I said.

       “You know I won’t tolerate gay stuff in my house,” she scolded.

        “I’m aware. There isn’t any ‘gay stuff’ happening in your house,” I replied, my voice becoming firmer.

        “You are gay, and I can’t have gay stuff in my house, so you have to leave,” my mom ordered, her voice breaking a little.

        “Where am I supposed to go?”

         “Stay in your room tonight, but you’ll have to live in the garage starting tomorrow,” she offered, and stood up and walked out without looking at me. I sat there wondering how someone who loved me could just toss me aside because she didn’t like one part about me. My eyes started to tear up at the realization that I was being kicked out for being gay. My mother was casting me out like I had some disease.

         A few years later, my mom called me to ask why I’m not going to church.

        “Christians are hypocritical,” I replied.

        “Not all of them are. Some of us still follow the teachings of Jesus,” she said as I rolled my eyes. I have had a strained relationship with my mother since I came out, and an even more strained relationship with Christians since that day.

        “Christians don’t like gay people, mom,” I said. “I can have my belief without going to the holy temple of judgment every Sunday.”    

       “It would just be nice to see you back at church,” she said, as if that was all that mattered to her.

         I hadn’t been back at church because I knew what would have been waiting for me there. I would have walked into the church sanctuary, a place intended for welcome and refuge, and been met with scorn and judgment. I knew that no one there would understand. I knew that no one there would be on my side. The older people who had mistaken me for that kid from Home Alone wouldn’t have been as kind as they once were. Their noses would upturn at the sight of me. Their backs would turn toward me, just like my mother’s had when I told her I was gay.

        “You know, you never ask me about my love life,” I told my mother.

        “Well, you know, that’s not something that I’m, uhhh, well,” she started to stammer.

        “You know what, I’m done trying. I’m your son, and I’m gay. If you can’t accept this and be a part of my personal life, then you have no business being my mother. Call me when you’re ready to talk, like, really talk,” and I hung up on her.  

         It’s been eleven years, and I am still waiting for a call back.

Writer: Marty Allee is a Fullerton College student, majoring in English. He currently works as a bartender at Disneyland. He loves to watch cheesy sci-fi shows and play board games. He can be contacted by email at allee.marty@gmail.com. This is his first published piece.

Artist: Andres Martinez was born in Mexico City and is inspired by the people of his home country. He has adopted Chicano arte and has come up with his unique style. Through murals, drawings and paintings, he relates the message of struggle, achievements, and common people. Andres commemorates and emphasizes the struggles and existence of the gente that he portrays. With these portraits, he would like his audience to not only admire but ponder who these everyday people are and what stories they have to tell.