Bills and clients call from screeching screens. Phones clang. But instead, amid a canopy of stars, my older sister tells me to relax. To breathe, to inhale. She takes my hand. We waltz to Tchaikovsky, while summer psithurisms whisper and a full moon rises, casting the brightest beacons, shadows fleeing.

Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Mir-Yashar’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Ariel Chart, among others. He has been working on a short story collection centered around two siblings and their quest for the American Dream. Mir-Yashar lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.