Cover Photo: A photo of a woman in total darkness, her face bathed with neon light.
Photograph by Timothy Dykes/Unsplash

Living with the Dead in Placentia, CA

Oftentimes, the dead leave town. Olga thinks the dead leave because they find there is no place for them.

Olga had been on the waitlist for three years, and a resident for one year, when her dead husband showed up at her door. His chin was tucked to his chest. Was it nerves? Stringy hair ran thin at his crown. Nobody washed him? An oxygen tank hugged doglike to his leg, wheeled on a little chrome dolly, air tubes tethering to his nostril.

free to take it or leave it,

authorizes the following: video recording in designated areas, limited-term specimen banking ofLearned to hoard money from your side

Not safe,

she

*

could

Olga’s husband used to hit her sometimes, and she couldn’t talk about it.

It looked like him, like he did right before he died. And then it undid: it puddled on the floor, splashing her shoe.

this

Partial

come back?”

Amanda Kallis is a writer from Los Angeles living in Brooklyn. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her writing appears in Catapult, the Bare Life Review, the Black Warrior Review (2018 nonfiction contest winner), McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She's been awarded fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Currently she's working on a speculative novel.

Twitter: @amandaleekallis / amandakallis.com