About Me

→ My real name is Michael Louis, but everyone calls me Milo. I'm a 22-year-old student currently working to earn my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing. (Expected May '25!)→ I am a writer of mostly shortish stories: weird fiction, generically slippery fusions of supernatural horror, science fiction, occult and fantasy with a strong focus on character and interpersonal connection–or maybe enmeshment. Even if estranged from the world as we know it, my preferred subjects are always human at heart.→ I'm also a visual artist. My work is primarily digital with focus on character/concept illustration and creature design, which often accompanies or helps me behind the scenes to develop my written works.

Artist Statement

I am a writer and illustrator preoccupied with gentle transgressions into the world of the liminal, especially when it comes to blurring the line between human and not. Brought to life in thoughtful prose that luxuriates in image, and digital illustrations that insinuate depths of character and narrative, misunderstood monsters and precocious acts of empathy abound in the stories I tell.From reckoning with the visceral discomfort of living in a body, accepting the little agonies of needing and receiving kindness, or making peace with the otherness within ourselves, I believe that artistic acts of catharsis are vital affirmations of our presence in the world. To that end, my favorite horror stories to write are always autobiographies—even if they’re not true for me, they’re true for someone.Narratives of suffering intrigue me not because I enjoy suffering, but because I believe in the power of people to survive it. I create art as both a tool and testimony in that process of overcoming.

Art Commissions

I'll draw for you! Digital illustrations of figures and scenes starting at $30 per character. Please navigate to my gallery for examples of my most recent work.


Base prices in USD

per character🌟Head / BustFull body
Monochrome$30$50
Simple Colors$45$75
Simple Render$60$100
Full Render$80$130

Monochrome: a rougher, sketchier style with only one or two colors.Simple Flat Colors: a style with clean outlines & full color, but no notable rendering.Simple Render: the above plus roughly rendered shadows/highlights to indicate form.Full Render: the above plus complex painted details to indicate texture as well as form.

Simple background: This includes backdrops that are largely out of focus or otherwise lack complex details, which will cost an additional $25. Note: flat colors, gradients & geometric shape backgrounds are included for free upon request.Complex background: The background is a major focus of the piece or otherwise requires significant and expansive detail to be rendered. The cost will vary on a case-by-case basis, but is expected to land around $60 depending on complexity.

Guidelines

I'd be happy to draw for you! But there's a few things you should know:

I Will DrawI Will Not Draw
✔ couple art including original characters, fan characters, or real people (with their consent)X depictions of underage, nonconsensual, or otherwise inappropriate relationships
✔ characters or figures of any shape, gender, age, ability, or species, from any fandom or original workX hate speech or discrimination against any real-world group or individual
✔ violence & gore, body horror, or otherwise dark-themed and conceptually scary contentX threats of real-world violence or sexually violent content (see above)
✔ romantic or intimate situations & non-sexual artistic nudityX explicitly sexual, pornographic or fetish-related content

I reserve the right to refuse a commission at my discretion, even if its violation of the above guidelines is not immediately obvious or is otherwise contested by the commissioner.I take payment in USD via PayPal or Venmo only, and will require an email address and/or phone number to send an invoice. I require at least 25% payment up front, and an additional 25% after a client has seen and confirmed their satisfaction with the initial sketch. The remainder may be paid after the artwork's completion.If you want me to draw something, but you're not sure whether or not it violates these rules, please feel free to ask me directly so that I can continue to clarify them. :)


Terms of Service:

As an artist, I reserve the following rights:

→ To reproduce commissioned artworks for various purposes, including but not limited to: display in my online portfolio, reposting on social media including Patreon, or other forms of self-promotion, unless otherwise discussed and agreed upon before acceptance of the commission.→ To cancel and refund a commission at any time should I be unable to complete it due to extraneous circumstances. (This is a last resort, as I would prefer to communicate around delays rather than abandon a project if at all possible.)→ To refuse completion of an accepted commission if sufficient payment is not provided within a reasonable timeframe, particularly in the event that a client fails to communicate their payment status.→ To work on queued commissions in any order I choose, except when a rush fee is negotiated and paid. Rush fees ensure that a commission receives priority over others, but does not enforce a calendar deadline.→ To retract a piece of art from public display, or to retract from a client who violates these terms the rights to the final artwork.

As a client, you're entitled to the following rights:

→ To repost, share, or otherwise display commissioned artwork wherever you please, as long as credit (a mention of my screen name or a link to this website) are included.→ To receive a full refund should I fail to begin and complete your commission.→ To request work-in-progress previews of your commission at any time, and further to request changes, additions, or other revisions to the artwork at such checkpoints. Be aware, however, that significant alterations that would require redrawing of more than a third of the image may result in additional fees and/or delays in completion.→ To print, trace, copy, or otherwise reproduce my artwork for private use or other non-commercial purposes, as long as appropriate credit is provided as described above.→ To edit, filter, or otherwise repurpose elements of a commissioned artwork for your own artistic project, such as a collage, so long as clear and consistent credit is given and you do not claim the element as your own work.

Contact Me

I can be reached via email at [email protected] for business inquiries, but the best way to get in touch with me quickly is at the Discord handle dweeblet (formerly dweeblet#4075). You can also find me & my artwork on these sites:

Experience


Freelance Artist, Self-employed, Boston MA, 2015-present
→ Created & iterated upon custom character illustrations according to client specifications of subject, style, pose, & mood
→ Collaborated with clients in project design & execution
Lead Writing Editor, Contributor, Phantasmal Nights Charity Zine, Chicago IL (Remote), 2023-present (expected release late Spring 2024)
→ Received & vetted contributor applications for skill, flexibility & applicable experience
→ Selected from contributor pitches for quality, variety & thematic relevance
→ Edited literary contributions for spelling, grammar/punctuation & length
Editor, Mouth Magazine, Chicago IL, 2024
→ Voted on submissions of prose, poetry, comics & other text-based art for publication
→ Edited submissions for spelling, grammar/punctuation, readability, & content clarity
→ Recommended applicable trigger warnings to accompany sensitive content

Publications


September 28th, 2023 — Concert Review: Hozier Brings “Unreal Unearth” to Huntington Bank Pavilion, for F News Magazine, Chicago, IL. → view on Fnews websiteDecember 13th, 2023 — Comic: REPAIR/LOVE, for Xerox Candy Bar Issue #38: Monsters & Cryptids, Chicago, IL

Projects


February 12, 2020 — Boo (Hoo), a 50,954-word anthology of life & undeath in a suburb plagued by ghosts, currently unpublished.December 8th, 2022 — WEREWOLF, MEET REVENANT, a 25-page concept/process book on the writing & illustration of supernatural figures, examining their psychological & narrative connotations. 15 full-color copies were printed via service bureau, then self-distributed.January 7th, 2023 — Skating On, a 9,365-word story about a teenager working overtime to get her father a Christmas present in a town chronically haunted by ghosts. Contributed to the 2022 Holiday Truce, an online secret Santa event for artists & writers. → linkJanuary 31st, 2023 — a fort of lovers’ teeth, a 9,114-word story about two high-schoolers who have an unsettling encounter with their local tutelary spirit. Contributed as a last-minute pinch-hitter for the aforementioned 2022 Holiday Truce. → linkNovember 6, 2023 — untitled haunting game, a feature-complete interactive narrative about exploring an abandoned house. It was written & coded in javascript, playable in any web browser. → view on itch.io

Poems

Gleanings

(page in progress! check back in a little bit for more poems)

Gleanings

Originally compiled October, 2023.

Things I've written about things that bring me joy: found language poetry from chats I've had with my friends. (I like the way language pours out of me when I'm just talking to communicate).


this makes me wanna nap in the sun
except it is raining.
i'm just imagining
this could be a way of saying
“i love you, i missed you,”
but I lost my nerve.
it's not totally accurate to how things really were
however all of it is one hundred percent True,
you know?
they're just poems.
i don't know whether to be pleased or anguished
but I trust you.
it's very simple but it does Things to me
and it is ugly and needful
PERFECT ON ALL FRONTS;
It makes me so Everything.
this is true
like real, serious poetry
that deserves to be printed and kissed.

Short Stories

Lua (2019)

1.5k words. A son comforts his grieving father and grows closer to the memory of his mother with a supernatural rite of passage.

My Friend Walks the Night (2023)

1.2k words. A spectral friend offers a guiding token on the dark and branching path of dreams.

Deucalion (2024)

1.3k words. After losing their best friend in a tragic accident, two teenagers befriend the lost spirit that has come to occupy his body.

(page in progress! check back in a little bit for more stories)

Lua

1,581 words. Originally written March 25th, 2019.


Content warning: Brief references to domestic alcoholism, fantasy violence/trafficking.

“A full moon is poison to some; they shut it out at every crevice, and do not suffer a ray to cross them; it has a chemical or magical effect; it sickens them. But I am never more free and royal than when the subtle celerity of its magic combinations, whatever they are, is at work.”― Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Amber Gods and Other Stories


The moon is watching.Her gaze filters, watery and pale, through the dark, casting blotchy shadows into Randell’s bedroom as it passes between the drapes. His gangly adolescent body is stretched out on top of his sheets, spread-eagle and restless. There is an itch crawling beneath his skin, in sweaty palms and shallow breaths.The merle shadows of his bookshelf and his closet are vague through the tired veil of his lashes, seen through half-lidded eyes. He can’t sleep, so he stares at the indistinct expanse of his bedroom wall instead. It’s painted cornflower blue, and a poster for some police procedural from his father’s childhood is tacked above the squat bureau. All of his clothes are rumpled in his laundry basket instead of folded inside.Something foreign is inside him, dragging a hook through his innards and making him feel sick and fitful. The light slipping into the room is hot on his skin, needling him with countless little claws when it scrapes against him. His door is shut, window too, and that makes him feel oddly confined. He doesn’t know what, but something isn’t right.Despite everything, the feeling is not menacing or foreboding; merely uncomfortable. He doesn’t resist it. It tugs at him from within and, like ink into water, he slides into himself beneath the fervent kiss of the moonlight. She sings to him, lilting and slow.His paws hit the floor when he rolls off the bed.


Oren knocks back another glass with trembling hands. His vision has started to swim, but the warm rush of alcohol keeps him drinking. And drinking, and drinking so he can sleep. The photo of Ana stares back at him, frozen in an amber-lit memory.She was tall and lean with tight curls and laughing blue eyes like gems. He thinks she looked like an angel, even during full moons; the spectacle of her, unearthly graceful, drew him in from the start and never let go.As a wolf, Ana was all rippling muscle beneath her dense coat, fangs as long as his fingers; predatory by design, and yet she was so thoroughly gentle it made him shiver. She would put her wet nose to his and tell him with her eyes, so big and brilliant, that she loved him, even like this. She would sing to him, throaty and canine, until the moon slid beneath the distant sea and the wolf left her asleep in his arms.He loved her, too.The bitter ache of a sob rises in his throat—Randell was only a toddler when she vanished. Before then, she had rubbed her pregnant belly and sung stories to their boy, whispered fables of the Great Old Ones that lent their brilliance to the wolves and birthed their people. He was a piece of something bigger, she promised, to Randell and Oren alike. The child indulged in the adoring lilt of her lullabies for only an instant, the long minute between infancy and first words; an amniotic haze of childhood closeness that he will never fully remember.He won’t remember her.That thought latches on and pulls a hiccup from him, drawing up a soft cry as he buries his face in his hands. They say time heals, but every year it only seems to get worse—the hollowness of grief only yawns deeper, and Oren doesn’t know what to do. Not with a kid like this.He cannot carry Ana’s culture along, can’t pass it down to Randell. Not without her. He has waited for his son’s first wolf-night from the moment of his birth—at first with anxious eagerness, but now terror claws at his heart. There is nothing he can do to guide him, not through something as intuitive as a werewolf’s dreamy shift—but Randell is of age. It is coming.There’s a market for werewolf parts, he knows. Luxurious pelts that bring good luck, ground-up claws for strength, tooth-charms for profit, diluted blood to cure all manner of ails. There is no proof, and no one willing to chase it, but Oren is certain that they took Ana from him. He quivers at the thought of Randell being claimed, too.


His senses assault him, bleeding together despite the startling clarity of their newfound intensity. Randell gathers all four limbs beneath him, balanced on his fingers, and feels something well up deep within him—something primal, perhaps, muscle-memorized instinct that draws his gaze to the moon.Her light shines brilliantly blue through the window, all else muted into a haze of stark sepia in the dark. The moon sings to him, urges him awake, and he takes command of his alien body to move. Warmth suffuses him; he feels safe, cradled by whispers that rain from the night sky, a shower of indistinct sensation—it makes him understand. Lapping waves of caramel-sweet comfort wash over him, snug and heavy like sleep.He can scent thick warmth in the immediate air, spiced by a thin chill of the city that creeps through the cracks in the window frame. Randell lifts his head, parting his jaws to more acutely taste the air; beneath the door he smells the stagnant must of carpet, lingering traces of sour stovetops and citrus bathroom cleaner—and something else.He rears up onto his hind legs, curling his dextrous forepaws around the doorknob and yanking. The return to resting stance jarrs his shoulders, but his door’s open now, and he stalks forth onto the landing. The foreign aria of the moon impresses upon him her devotion, bittersweet regret opposed by the undying bond of their blood.The other house-smells are thicker, unobstructed, but through the aimless mesquite of home that last metal-sharp stink cuts the air, making Randell’s eyes water painfully. His heart thuds in time with the mourning of the moon. The low throb of the heating system is acute in his ears, filtered by the distant purr of the freeway.He scents the air again, ears pricked into the house at the bottom of the stairs. It is uncomfortable and thoroughly disorienting to descend head-first, but he manages, slow and careful despite his young clumsiness—encouraged by gossamer filaments of something like pride, not his own, but reassuring nonetheless. A second pounding sound emerges, quick and quiet, and beneath hitched gasps and airless gulps Randell realizes it is another heartbeat: his father’s.All breath leaves his lungs when the moonlight touches his face. It buffets him at first, but then gentles, cards through his fur with glass-light fingers. She eases into his head with a watercolor-blur of bliss and thinly-veiled remorse—she, the moon and more, leads a chorus that rattles to his very bones, reminding him of the Great Old Ones and of her unceasing life in his heart. The blue light is sapphire-sharp, and in the dark he sees her; his goddess, the moon, but also the humble vessel of his lost mother’s love.He understands.


Round yellow eyes peer, unblinking, back at him when he finally looks up. The night has come, it seems.Randell’s long limbs are clumsy as he edges down the stairs, paws just a sight too big, but Oren can see the vestiges of his mother’s grace lying in wait for him to grow into. Randell is lean and long-bodied in contrast to Ana’s compact strength, but powerful nonetheless. The moonlight washes through the curtains over his sable bay pelt, highlighting the reddish ticking along his sides—a seamless blend of their colors.Oren chokes.Randell pushes his shrewd, furry face up beneath Oren’s elbow, pinching the sleeve with needle-teeth and drawing his arm away when he reaches for the handle of whiskey on the table. Slowly, he pulls his father so that he slides from his chair to the kitchen floor, legs folded ungainly beneath him.A warbling whine purls up from the pup’s throat, long black ears splayed anxiously against his skull. His tongue darts out to lap consolingly at Oren’s face, soft whimpers of sympathy quivering between their bodies.Shifting, Oren pulls his son closer, gathering the little werewolf into his lap like a genuine puppy. He caresses his son’s long ears, cupping his furry cheeks and pressing gentle kisses to his sloping forehead.“I love you,” he says, little more than a whisper in the stark emptiness of their moon-washed kitchen. Randell’s almond eyes glow dimly, reflecting deep anguish as he closes them and throws his head over Oren’s shoulder in a makeshift hug.He cages a sob behind his teeth, but the next one escapes him easily. Oren curls his fingers like claws into the ruff of Randell’s neck, stroking shakily down the length of him. “I love you,” he babbles, “I love you, my boy, and your mother would love you so, so much—look at you, just like her—I’ll keep you safe—”He goes on and on, scrubbing tears from his face as he goes, petrified adoration quavering in his voice. They lie entwined and sobbing until the sun rises.A little boy’s voice reconciles, hoarse in the early-morning hush, that “It’s gonna be okay. Mama told me so.”

My Friend Walks the Night

1,232 words. Originally written March 23, 2023.

No content warnings apply.


The path stretched long ahead of me. Purple bracken choked the road and branches like groping claws reached down to menace me from the trees. This road was ill-omened as they came, but I had no choice but to walk it. Though I was uncertain of just what might be waiting at the end, the roiling shadows behind me ensured there was no turning back.After a time dilated and compressed beyond scrutiny—as it so often is in dreams—the narrow trail split into a two-pronged fork like the divergence of a vein. I paused to consider my options. Each side seemed identical by sight, both muddy ruts shrouded in mourning veils of dew-damp willow. Pale moonlight cast everything in wavering patches of silver, blue, and black, and each shifting shadow invented new dangers to my troubled mind. All I had was my own feeble impulse, my sparing knowledge. It wasn’t much to go on. On a whim I decided the left road must be unlucky, so I turned to the right.“I wouldn’t go that way,” someone said.His voice was ineluctably pleasant, tuneful and lilting as a song. I felt immediately that I could trust him, so I cast about in the dark to face my advisor. My roaming eyes expected a fellow traveller, perhaps a wandering youth befitting the bright and boyish timbre of his speech.But there was a monster there.What few parts I could make sense of were oily shadows, iridescent in peacock shades of purple, blue and green, but the rest of the boy-creature’s body was indistinctly, intensely dark. Absorbing all light as though he were an absence, he cut a perfect black silhouette lounging across the thick branch above me like a cat.I froze where I stood and spoke no words, but the monster took notice of my attention. His eyeless face frightened me terrifically—it was mostly teeth, long overlapping fangs all pristine and glistening as though carved of perfect black nacre, like a coyote’s lipless skull pressed flat and lacquered. Even on all fours he matched my height easily, yet his presence felt small in its timidity, long-necked and rangy in the way of a starving thing. His spine was a ridge of brutal elegance, sharp-edged curves like the spikes of a cemetery fence.This creature was truly terrible and lovely. I was unfit to judge him anything else. We regarded each other in silence and I could sense his patience as though it were my own, liquid and slippery as it brushed almost caressingly against my bewilderment. I endured such strange affections and didn’t dare move. Fear paralysed me that running would impel him to give chase, the thrill of which would surely put an end to whatever curious intellect kept me presently unharmed. But all he did was squat down in front of me, bony legs folded neat and demure beneath his haunches. He tipped his head from side to side in that eerie way that animals do, acutely considering.“Who are you?” I asked, perhaps unwisely.“A friend,” he answered in that lovely voice of his. It made me forget entirely about his fearsome jaws and great taloned hands so nearby, the unreadable absence of his eyes. I even forgot the huge and terrifying mystery of his presence, he was so ineffably cheery and grand in his manner. He could only be my friend. Stirred by the wind, the looming trees whispered around us, but all else was silent.I put my back to the monster and faced the black fog behind me. Shadow peaked like storm-whipped whitecaps, violently disturbed. Somehow, by some instinct deeper than sense, I recognized in them some nebulous ill intent, a shadow of wickedness seen through frosted glass.“I think… are you here to help me?” I asked him. Gooseflesh rose on my skin. There were eyes in the trees, I knew. This place was suffocating.My friend leaned in. His electric presence made my hackles rise. Before my eyes his jaw eased open, parted to bare thick fangs that shone like metal in his black-stained skull. Without instruction I knew to raise my hand and reach in between his teeth. They were each as long as my fingers but bone-dry, unwet by blood—at least not recently. Fear giddied me, heart racing to think that he might have bitten down at his leisure, but he didn’t, not quite. I met the empty sockets of his eyes and he squeezed, just for a second, just gently enough not to break the skin, before letting me go. I trembled uncontrollably, but utterly foolish impulse insisted I stand my ground, urging me on like spurs at my flanks. His breath stank of copper and clay, mint and honey. Inside, his mouth felt like velvet.Nestled beneath the tongue I felt something hard and round beneath my fingertips, flattened as a coin. An electric spark leapt up my arm and burst into my pounding heart. All the world narrowed towards it, this thrumming heat in the hollow of his jaw. I only realised the numbness of my fingers as sensation returned to them. A sigh of relief escaped me as I took the token and bathed in its flickering golden glow, the only warmth in this dark and frigid place. Behind us, the ravenous fog seemed, if only for a moment, to still.It looked like a coin—an obol, perhaps—but it was heavy enough that my hand dipped almost precariously beneath its weight. It was neither metal nor bone nor crystal, but some alloy of the three, delicately carved with artful shapes I had no hope to interpret. As I held it, a peculiar gravity came over me. I understood more and more with every passing heartbeat, knowing without being told that this was unutterably important—that its profound and gentle heat was life-giving.Humbled and embrittled in equal measure, I turned it over, thumbing around its worn outer edge. It had seen much more than I, that was certain. Held in my uncareful hands was a life, soft heat pulsing into my palm like a heartbeat. Unshed tears smarted my eyes at the thought, though I blinked them away and did not cry. Carefully, I lifted the obol and pressed it gently back into my friend’s mouth. He licked his chops as I withdrew, making a grin of his fangs. For the first time he rose up on his hind legs alone, his full height more than mine twice over. He tipped his head down at me and hummed, a sweet and sonorous rumble of approval.It dawned on me that I’d just passed a test.My monster-friend bent and offered me a hand, long-fingered and cold. His leathery palm engulfed my own, rough and cool like moon-chilled stone. Thus I trailed after this most unusual stranger, led by the hand like a child. I still had questions. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there or where we would yet go, but despite it all I found myself trusting him implicitly. Dread lingered at the edge of my attention, but I trusted him. I could do nothing else.Hazy determination abandoned, I couldn’t remember much more than that. Bit by bit the world’s integrity failed me. I drifted in an indefinite dark, both shaken and at ease.And I woke from the dream with a coin in my hand.

Deucalion

1,286 words. Excerpted from a work currently in-progress.

Content warning: brief description of a corpse.


An ineffable sensation plagued Jo that the body, laid so still and tranquil in its box, didn’t look much like Cody at all.She considered him uneasily. Alive, he was almost always faintly smirking, but here his face was dignified, eerily mild. His unruly hair had been subjected to some combination of trimming, combing, and product that made it lay flat and smooth about his temples. It felt, somehow, like the next size down in a nesting doll of tiny losses, to see his imperfect edges sanded down in death.Not to mention how Cody would have absolutely hated it. She half-expected him to sit up in his casket and tousle it back to his preferred disarray, teasing out bedhead spikes and unbrushed curls with crooked fingers. He didn’t, of course, but Jo could picture it so vividly, a superimposed ghost that almost seemed more real than the unmoving truth in front of her.The funeral home’s makeup artist had slathered his face with artificial rosiness that blotted out the dense brown freckles on the bridge of his nose. Though his wounds were covered well, whatever shade of concealer they’d used was just a shade too peachy for the olive undertone of his tan. With it, they’d tried to contour his bruised under-eyes and sunken cheeks away as though it might help her forget that Cody was dead.Despite herself, Jo whispered, as though to raise her voice might wake the body up. “It feels wrong, doesn’t it?”At her side, Sal nodded. “Yeah. It’s… unreal, I guess.” Then he let go of her hand to wipe his sweaty palm on his trousers. With a shuddering sigh he turned away. Jo followed him, and together they lingered against the wall at the edge of the gathering.The funeral itself was a sparing, private affair. Including herself and her Bubbe, Jo could tally everyone present on her hands. She counted Cody’s parents and sister, the Velascos, who were Sal and his parents, and two other mourners she had never met. Those people, she quickly learned, were Cody’s maternal aunt and his godfather, whose only apparent commonality was that they had crossed state lines to pay their respects. That was everyone. For some flimsy excuse or another her own parents had been unable to appear in person, though they at least had the grace to send flowers along. Her mother had chosen them, white roses and hyacinths for purity and prayers.Time crawled through the viewing. When that was done, everyone drove to some dull edge-of-town venue to break before the burial in the evening. Bubbe Ida murmured her comforts, but Jo leaned back against the car headrest and squeezed her eyes shut, unhearing. The timeline for official affairs was abrupt, but they’d already waited almost a week to have them—Jo suspected, from bits and pieces picked up from Mira, that Cody’s parents had debated having them at all.Food and drink was offered, but no one ate much. Even Sal, whose stomach was by all accounts bottomless, took his hor d'oeuvres without enthusiasm. It felt impolite to refuse outright, but Jo couldn’t stomach anything at all, so she just walked around with a single stuffed mushroom on a paper plate. She was sure no one was convinced—not that they particularly cared—but it was at least something to stare at.While the adults muttered amongst themselves, Jo came up beside Sal again. “Hey.”“Hey,” he replied, voice small and hoarse. Without his omnipresent red beanie he seemed a few inches shorter and almost naked, somehow younger. Sal sipped his water. He glanced at her mushroom, then back up at her face as though comparing the two. His glasses were too foggy for her to make full eye contact, but he cocked a brow in clear invitation. Jo opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say, so she shut it again. The moment passed. She looked away from him to watch the adults.Talking came in mostly-hushed murmurs, and the intervening silence ebbed and swelled as uncomfortable conversations tapered into anxious lulls. The out-of-state relatives were caught up on some few stories that were new to them, but the small and familiar attendance meant there was little to be said that everyone hadn’t already known, or else didn’t want to be reminded of. For all there was to like about Cody, celebration of his best qualities only belabored to his mourners just how young he’d been.For someone to die at all was a sad thing, but the sudden, violent death of a fourteen-year-old especially discouraged any hope for a halfway-cheerful wake.Jo, for her part, drifted through the proceedings like a zombie. At some point she lost her paper plate, but didn’t remember discarding it. After lunch, things moved outside. She fought off selfish tears and heard little of the eulogies.Mr. and Mrs. Walker’s comments were stilted and brief. Each word uttered was heavy with the bone-deep weariness of overwhelming loss, still detached with shock—and who could blame them? Black sheep or no, he had been fourteen. He’d been so loved and had such potential, they said, and even though he was gone he’d still done the Walker family proud—and would continue to, forever, as long as his name was remembered.The Walkers weren’t religious, so there was no priest, pastor or Rabbi. During the burial itself, Sal glued himself to Jo’s side and sobbed quietly into her shoulder, convulsive gasps disappearing into the velvet sleeve of her dress. She put her arm around his neck and leaned into him, letting her own silent tears drip into his close-cropped hair. Composure abandoned at the pulpit, Mira had taken her grief almost to the edge of the grave. She bawled loud and messy into a cupped hand over her brother’s casket as it was lowered into the ground.Mrs. Walker ducked her head to sniffle and dab at her teary cheeks, shoulders shaking with stifled cries. Even Mr. Walker made no characteristic attempt to raise the mood. He just stared, glassy-eyed, at the grave as it was filled, as though hoping the body might spring up alive again and spare them all the tragedy.Cody’s godfather was the first to leave, citing some vagary of his work life—though, to his credit, he promised to visit again very soon and even seemed to mean it. Then went Mrs. Walker’s sister, who had a long drive back to Arkansas. At some point, Sal’s parents broke off to peel him away from Jo and take him home. He went without protest, wiping reddened eyes on his shirt sleeve and half-heartedly promising to call.Jo nodded without listening, eyes still fixed on the fresh gravedirt now piled and pressed neatly in the shadow of the headstone. Cody was here, right in front of her. This frozen slab of brass blue granite was all that remained of him to touch. She stood and stared until the engraving left afterimages. She stood there until her thick-soled loafers began to sink into the wet soil, dew-kissed grass tickling her ankles through her thin black tights, leaving damp spots that bloomed against her skin. She stood there and stared until the early evening breeze started to chill her through her dress, until her Bubbe eventually hobbled up to let Jo know that their ride had arrived and it was time to go home.Another blink, and she was standing stupidly on her own front stoop as though waiting for someone to let her inside. Limping upstairs, feeling waterlogged. Next, she was home in her room, where she collapsed into her bed without even taking off her shoes.In time, grief became boring. October marched on.

2024

2023

2022

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2020