While the Captors Are Away

by Joe Celizic

Outside, the silver, gray and white city buildings all jut up and down between the streets like teeth. It’s curious how much more you can see up here, just six stories up, like you’ve transcended a moment of time and space. You see the way people shrink and become part of a collective movement. They are punctuation, they are mitochondria, and their deaths don’t matter. Cars drift slowly atop the gray lines, straight and steady, predetermined by the author of the roads. And this is the truth of who you are: a kidnapped girl.

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Joe Celizic, a Pushcart Prize nominee, received an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University, where he also worked as the prose editor for Mid-American Review. His work has been published in Skive Magazine and Fiction Weekly, and more is forthcoming in PANK and Southpaw Journal.