by Lavonne Leong

Oberammergau, Germany, is a mountain town where once a decade they stage the famous Passion Play. The rest of the time they make excellent cuckoo clocks.
It’s 87 degrees. And 4,026 miles from the American city where I live, and from Geoff. He phones almost every day, even though I remind him that we’re racking up a bill we can’t afford. “I don’t care,” he says. “When you come back we need to get married.” I have always wanted to be loved in the way Geoff says he loves me. Every day I let the phone ring for one ring longer before I pick it up.
Next to the town, the River Ammer passes by. In late spring it receives the ice melt from the mountains nearby, cold and clear, but the river itself is a small one, maybe thirty feet from bank to bank. It’s too hot. Hotter than I expected Germany to be. The river looks good to cross.
I’m unprepared for the cold shock, like taking away my legs and replacing them with ice. I am not sure it’s pain. The water, transparent, has force, urging downstream everything it touches. The river glitters, pushes at my thighs, deepens. I know that if I stay here too long, everything will go numb. The sunlight arrows in from eight light minutes away, hits the river and scatters. A shard enters my eye. The river asks me to move in a different direction. I will keep crossing.
The delight of going the way the indifferent water is still asking you not to. Resistance.
I will not think about how I am going to get back. A boy appears at the chain link fence on the shore I’ve just left. Behind him are snow-capped mountains. “Speak Eenglish to me! I lahv you, I lahv you!” he shouts, meaninglessly, merrily. Because I’m nineteen, I laugh; it’s what I think a girl should do, look like she’s having fun.
Lavonne Leong: Futurist in training. Journalist in medias res.
Sharply rendered details that illuminate character, define choices and unfurl theme. A rich central metaphor that keeps expanding beyond three hundred and twenty seven words, beyond the margins of the page. An audacious shift from first to second person POV, then back again – a technical rule-breaking that mirrors the theme and works like a charm. And a simple line in the closing paragraph that will speak to anyone who’s ever chosen to swim against the current: “I will not think about how I am going to get back.” Excellent work.
Frank Reilly
Guest Editor