FEB, 2026 New York, New York.
The river has frozen over. We’re fixed in place… and even still we’re leaving, being left…
T said she could not face meeting up today and not because of the cold. She said she was wordless. Had been broken up with and then had fallen back asleep. Had written to him asking if he wanted his book on obstinacy back.
And E is sick, again—Immunity amnesia. Her body does not keep the score. It loses track entirely. She said that a headache is a past tense thing making itself present. On top of that, there is someone she loves who is refusing, with duration, to speak with her. She wants to call her right now, not to speak, but just to see if she answers… She said it is true what SW said about the unenlightened (us): that somehow we feel little-to-no difference between the destruction of a town and the exile from it…
Then R called from Paris. She said that she needed to burn money for her father who died three years ago today. That her energy dousing Jungian therapist had recommended it. She said that she feared he might be stuck. That he might need it for passage. She said that the last time he called her was to ask her if she could wire him fifty dollars. She hadn’t then. But she needs to get it to him now— somehow. And so today she refueled his car.
Eliza Barry Callahan is a writer and filmmaker from New York City. Her debut novel, The Hearing Test (2024), won The Bard Fiction Prize and has been translated into multiple languages. Her writing has appeared in places including The Paris Review, BOMB, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her twenty-minute narrative film, The Non-Actor, premiered at TIFF and IFFR in 2025. She teaches at Columbia University.
