“And soon a new brain will be ashamed of this current one, but instead of writing another story to justify my failure, my future self will memorialize his shame with silence because silence is what remains when the music stops, and silence is what will remain of me when I stop writing, and I am afraid of silence, and I am still afraid, but I will not always be.” – Kaj Tanaka, “If I Had My Way This Story Would Be a Song,” Midwestern Gothic Winter 2017.

Photo by: Paul Carpenter