Essay: Original Sin

November 13, 2025.Reading time 36 minutes.

By Anna Davis Abel
Featured Art: “Self-Portrait” by Rachel Hall

“You’ve got to be feeling better!”

Kim, the nurse practitioner I see every month, beams at me from across her desk, framed by a fortress of file folders and half-drained pens. A congealed yellow mass perches in the corner of the tabletop, leering at me like an inside joke I no longer find funny. This is what ten pounds of fat looks like! she’d said once, jiggling it between her hands. You’ve lost four of these!

“I do feel better,” I lie, curling my lips into the smile I know she loves.

I am her only eating disorder patient—a peculiar case in a weight loss clinic that masquerades as a wellness program. They market health here, but the waiting room tells a different story: anxious bodies perch on plastic chairs, flipping through pamphlets promising transformation. The air smells faintly of antiseptic and desperation.

“You’re a real success story, Anna,” Kim says, slipping the reading glasses from atop her head. Her fingers dance over the laptop keys, scrolling, scrolling—pausing. A satisfied hum. “Looks like we’re only twelve pounds away from your BMI goal! And how long has it been since a binge?”

I aim for optimism. “Three months.”

The Names of Those We Love

June 1, 2025.Reading time 38 minutes.

By Kenyon Geiger

Featured Art: Stephen Reichert, Untitled, 2012. Oil on canvas, 16″ x 20″. “Cirlce” series.

It was finally settled: the competition was rigged, and Mrs. Klein would not be receiving her lifetime supply of free groceries after all. She set the letter down on her countertop with shaky hand and shaky breath. This was not a surprise. Aside from the mystery of how the competition was supposedly rigged, the news brought with it a strange comfort for Mrs. Klein. She was used to things not working out.

Her mother always thought of everything as God’s will, all part of His divine plan; this was atypical for a Jewish woman, at least in Mrs. Klein’s experience. Her mother reminded her more of the parents of the evangelical friends Mrs. Klein had at school; they often talked like that, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Of course, she wasn’t Mrs. Klein then, back when she was in school. She was Rebecca, a little girl with her entire life ahead of her.

Balloons

May 13, 2023.Reading time 45 minutes.

By Catherine Uroff

Featured Art: Polar Chroma Squall by John Sabraw

We’re waiting for a hot air balloon ride up by the old Warren County airport, in the middle of an open field, nothing around us but the long airport shed and a guy with a bushy beard sitting on the flatbed of a truck. Kent’s talking to the pilot about the weather, asking about refunds because it’s a little windy out. The pilot laughs. White teeth flashing in the middle of all that dark hair on his face.

“It’s a breeze,” he says. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Sherri calls me then. She’s lived across the street from us for years. She’s a gossip, telling me things that she shouldn’t, like who in the neighborhood is fighting over money, whose child is questioning, whose husband needs a lawyer. Last year, she asked my daughter, Aimee, to babysit for her while she played tennis. Apparently, Aimee turned on the television almost instantly and forgot to feed the kids their lunch and by the time Sherri came home, the house was wrecked and the children were stunned from all the shows they’d watched, and a boy was coming down the stairs, tucking in his shirt.

Ice Cream

May 1, 2022.Reading time 29 minutes.

Co-winner of the Movable / New Ohio Review Writing Contest

By Kandi Workman

Featured Art: He’s Got the Works, by John Schriner

“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” – Simone Weil

1
“Drop ’em dead like a dealer.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

He turned his slim face away from me, looked toward the muddy Elk River flowing with ease, shifted himself around on the cement ledge, kicking his dangling legs back and forth, bouncing rubber heels off the wall. We’d been sitting there for a while, talking, enjoying the late afternoon in early Spring. In the low light from the sun, the black-lined ice cream cone tattoo on the right side of his face, high on his cheek bone, just under his eye, stood out. I sometimes forget it’s there.

“Drop ‘em dead. That’s when your sales go up. It’s really fucked up. Addicts find out your shit killed somebody, they want your stuff. That’s just how it works.”

A Non-Orientable Surface

March 15, 2019.Reading time 56 minutes.

By Mari Christmas

My husband manages a cheap hotel off the interstate five days a week, and every Wednesday night he visits the community center pool. Some days I meet him there. I like to watch him push the water around. It helps with the arthritis, he says, sculling the surface, making frog legs. He believes I deserve an office job, something that allows me to move between cities while wearing a thin blouse. We hardly speak. This is because of all the guilt. I look out across the pool. Children shiver in wrinkled suits, sucking their hair. Inside, it is airless, hazy, the windows fogged. The water a dark tangle of rope. Even though I cannot see him, I know he is there.

After swimming my husband will stay in his small room, equipped with a desk and a plastic lamp, and berate his romantic Romanian pen pal over the phone. He feels the need to give important looks, to demonstrate his rigor over a crowded table, and so forth, even internationally. “If you piss in the corner, I piss in the corner,” he tells her, speaking in English. For two bars of chocolate a month she puts up with all of that. He refuses to learn her language, as he cannot be bothered with the gender of specifics.

Tonight, he comes into the kitchen with the phone saying he wants a son, one he will name Atilla. Atilla? I think. Like Atilla the Hun? I marvel at my attraction to this bareheaded man, whose age has a secure density to it, like a landmark, and how this makes me feel intimately bound to him. “Something that does not weaken the spirit. Nothing that gives him an ironic existence,” he explains to his girlfriend, and then retreats down the hall, padding softly, his shirt untucked. Through the walls I hear him say the name ennobles mankind and something about plundering a northern province. He is never done. He talks and talks. Another blind Milton dictating to his poor daughter. The top of my head says, at least they’re not sleeping together, but I no longer believe in any of that.

Coins for the Ferryman

September 22, 2014.Reading time 53 minutes.

By David Denny

Marlene and Ralph walked up Kaanapali Beach about half a mile from their hotel. They sat in a corner of an outdoor restaurant with a floor of sand. Each of the small, round tables was shaded by an umbrella made of palm leaves. A row of tropical greenery, punctuated with orange and red hibiscus, separated the restaurant from the boardwalk. They could hear the waves hitting the sand about forty feet away.

Marlene slipped off her sandals and wiggled her toes in the cool sand as she looked over the menu. Mahi was her new favorite; however, she’d eaten it two days in a row and thought she should try something else. Up next to the bar, a local singer was nearing the end of his lunchtime set. He took a slug of water, traded his guitar for a ukulele, and began crooning the popular island version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Marlene wasn’t all that hungry. A shrimp cocktail and a Diet Coke might do the trick. Her husband had his cell phone out on the table in front of him, checking their reservation for the dinner cruise out of Lahaina harbor. He had decided before he left the hotel that he would order a burger; he was tired of fish already.