The Odds
“Spring’s Coming” by Yan Jiang
We all know the platypus, right? Famous oddity. Beaked mammal. Looks like a preschooler made it up. Today, I found out they don’t have nipples. I don’t want you to think that I’ve spent any measurable amount of time prior to this discovery imagining their nipples, because I haven’t, but it didn’t not astound me. And if I’m to consider your perception, I should opt here for honesty and admit it was actually yesterday, which is never as quaint a day to be surprised, the fizziness having faded during REM sleep, so I lied. But it is true that they don’t have nipples (platypuses, to be clear, since some of my favorite yesterdays do). My father, much longer ago than yesterday, laid in an orphanage crib crying, not of hunger, though since everything is hunger if you look close enough, yes. Of hunger. He would scream his onesie red with it, and instead of the nipple of a mother, or a platypus, or a yesterday, would be promptly silenced with a gummy and soulless impersonator. Over and over again, a bottle. Loneliness - bottle. Fear - bottle. Boredom - bottle. No skin scent. No furry folds filled with milk for lapping. No bodily warmth to burrow into and so, no shock, really, that he would reach for a bottle for much of his life. Years before he was my father, in the first of many recoveries, he held a fresh egg, not like a platypus mother, tucking it snug between body and tail, but like a man, hungry, and grown enough to be learning what it takes to survive. When he cracked the shell against the edge of the hot frying pan, what sluiced out was not a yolk, but the beginnings of a thing that might have, under other circumstances, eventually lived. I don’t remember how long he had been my father by the time he told me this story. I don’t know if I got it. If he was the egg. Or the frying pan. Or the man he was, or could have been. All I know is this: he scrambled it anyway. Salt, pepper, oregano, a splash of milk, exactly the way his second mother would have done on a Saturday morning, smiling as he chirped at her about Bugs Bunny’s latest mischiefs, how every time you think he really doesn’t stand a chance, he turns it around. According to the social worker’s notes, my father would “never amount to anything.” They must not have watched enough cartoons. Because today — the real today, the one he almost didn’t get, infinite ways he might not have gotten it — he is sixty-two and eleven months sober and texting me a photo of a tulip, newborn and red and thriving, then seven words, simple and true: What a long, strange trip it’s been.
About the author
Emily Portillo is a queer poet, mother, and lover of snacks and skies. She was a finalist in the 2025 Peseroff Poetry Prize and Pinch Literary Awards in Poetry, among others, runner up for the 2024 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, and the winner of the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Contest. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle Magazine, The Comstock Review, Crab Creek Review, Hunger Mountain, Red Wheelbarrow, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere.
about the artist
Yan Jiang is a Chinese immigrant, Toronto-based illustrator, artist, and art educator. Inspired by nature, human emotions, and the subtle beauty of everyday life, Yan’s work weaves intricate narratives that invite viewers into surreal, immersive worlds. In a fast-paced world, she strives to create art that offers a quiet space for reflection and connection, inviting viewers to engage slowly and thoughtfully. Yan believes that honesty and personal emotions foster empathy, and her creations are deeply rooted in this ethos. She uses traditional mediums for their tactile, real-world textures, while also embracing digital tools to explore unexpected surfaces and dynamic compositions. Through her art, Yan aims to evoke a sense of stillness and emotional resonance, transforming the ordinary into something profound.