If a woman has born a man, she shall be unclean seven days.
12/2/26: I had to wrestle Patricia into isolation again. I’ve never had a senior like her. This is why Gary thinks it’s work causing the miscarriages. The stress and that sometimes it’s physical. My doctor doesn’t seem worried. And I’m not stressed. Gary just doesn’t understand how I can get to know these people yet watch them die. I think if he found someone dead every once in a while, he’d stop building worlds in video games and start helping me build one out here.
Light spotting today.
If a woman has born a man, on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.
12/3/27: Patricia’s son Carter visited. They sat at a table together. She kept asking if he was there to fix her attic fan, then kept trying to take us upstairs. Her husband had been a roofer. I think she sees enough of him in their son to just sense the residue of his memory. Carter used to try at first. He truly did. Now he just swipes through his phone for an hour.
A faint line on the test.
If she bear a maid child, she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and seven days.
12/5/28: Patricia wailed again at 12:10. Third night in a row. Calling the name Candace. No one knows who that is. Carter said he never heard of her. She wails for a minute, then sleeps. Yesterday, Gary showed me this labyrinth he’d built in Minecraft, all fuzzy blocks and torches that keep going into the earth. Sixty hours of work, he said. It all looks the same to me, every hall, every room. I’d never know we were sinking if he didn’t say so.
Mitch James is a Professor of Composition and Literature at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH, the Editor-at-Large at *Great Lakes Review*, and the owner of The Write Methods (LLC), where he teaches therapeutic and creative writing modalities to guide others in experiencing the transformative power of the written word. Mitch is the author of the novel *Seldom Seen: A Miner’s Tale *(Sunbury Press) and was a finalist for the 2024 *SmokeLong Quarterly* Grand Micro competition. He’s published works across the genres of short/flash/micro fiction, poetry, and academic scholarship. You can find his latest fiction in *SmokeLong Quarterly,* his poetry at *Shelia-Na-Gig, *and his scholarship at the *Journal of Creative Writing Studies *and *New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing*. Keep up with Mitch at mitchjamesauthor.com and @mitchjamesauthor.bsky.social.