spring 2024

Issue 17

poetry

OUT, OUT

GR COLLINS

Sometime after sunset
when the sky dabbles with
purples and blues and the
houses are flat shapes cut
from black plastic, the kids
of our block are still out
playing football in the street.
They are nearly invisible
in the fading light but you
can hear them laughing
and calling each other names
and their sneakers scuffing
on the asphalt with the rasp
and squeak of little birds.
You can feel the soft thunk
as the ball is kicked, see it
rising above the trees, and
you can see it pause there
at the apogee, trying to decide
if it will come back down
to us or keep going out, out
into the night, leaving behind
this spinning earth forever.

THEY LEAN

LAINE DERR

Though I never knew her, I tell
them that I love her, our bond
is more than mother and child. 

They smile, glad to have found
one who loves: She who loves.

They never ask me about my father.
They never ask me why my eyes are green.

I was created in darkness –
bodies unearthing existence.

My dead mom used to say, before
my time, Life smelled of evening stone.

Though I never knew her, I tell
them that her tea could sweeten
the sun. Come closer, the want is easy. 

WE SING OUR NAMES

LAINE DERR & CAROLINE TORRES

The skin of lovers, incense threaded oils
drifting under a moonless sky, Alpha
and Omega, a ring lined with legs that live
within the sun, dancers surfing the drums.

Follow the center, an invisible road I hear
them call as sweet rose wine touches my lips,
a desert traveler, regent of an itinerant storm,
wind and sand, music veiled in shades of flesh.

I am young, thirsty for floral scented hips,
days of busy nights, a chorus trading in spice.

BEFORE METASTASIS 

KAITLYN CROW

They’d fill plastic buckets with sudsy water on the front steps
and give us long plastic frames—at the time, I remember them massive,
but they probably weren’t much bigger than my hand is now. Each one was
a different shape, but the bubbles always blew the same—round, light,
lingering in the slow Sunday air around our heads. Some drifting, popping
in Grandma’s hair, a little soap in a cousin’s eye, low bubbles dancing
between my fingers: sudsy smiles, sudsy laughter, sudsy tears.

WASHING THE SHELLS

Greg Nelson

Sitting on the edge of the porch,
I gently churn mother-of-pearl shells
in the pail of soapy water between my feet.

The nacre's smoothness astonishes my fingertips.
Kneeling on the wet sand,
I pried the gritty rainbows loose.

It's not a crime to lose your mind.   
Nor is darkness in itself a sin.
Life was death, and death a promise.

After a year, my counselor smiled,
You're good to go. Learning from her
how thoughts can influence feelings,

rather than tumble at their mercry,
was the kind of work that exhausts you
to make you stronger, like splitting firewood.

I can sing goddamn,
or go with the good in good to go.
With a soft cloth, I burnish the shells,

and fan them on the grass.
Iridescence glistens across the gyres.
My job is to furnish the lens.

WEARY OF IMPERATIVES, HOWEVER WELL-MEANING

Greg Nelson

I close the anthology of poems and go for a walk.

So, to move you to hear the flute on the wind,
I need to tell you to listen?

I remember the pastor reciting upon this rock,
and the Lord's halo in the stained glass windows¾
an epiphany at seventeen that faded beneath the Milky Way.

There are inferences we're free to take or leave;
flesh and blood cannot divine when, where, or for who,
the window overlooking eternity will open and close again.

                                             ~

               Hiking through morning fog
alone in the inner gorge of the Grand Canyon
somewhere between the river and me
I'd taken the wrong fork

when a raven calling in the mist
led me through the dark ravines
up the steep switchbacks
onto the wide plateau.

               The sun breaking through
the scalloped sky
dappled the red rock
and coconino canyon walls.

               I did a two-step
and bowed to the dream
noble as it is
tethered to the air.

BUCHAREST AUTUMN

JC Alfier 

Nightfall, and I step into the labyrinth of the city.
I pause for a smoke, watch a woman speak brusquely
on her cell — bitterness caught in her breath,

hard eyes determined as a helmsman in a storm,
darting about like someone who’s been cornered.

In the chill air, her breath ghosts above the streets.
The rose tattoo between her breasts spits red
against the ambient light that contours her,

and I think of men I’ve known who gave themselves
only to women doomed to fall from grace.

When she hangs up mid-sentence, I approach,
ask if I may buy her a drink to cool her distress.
She puts a finger to my lips as if to seal a secret.

Beyond the streetlights that gild her,
the dark will part to let her pass.

I LEARNED LOVE

Thomas Orr

when my mother taught me
to bead,
sitting at the kitchen table,
speaking, in her quiet rhythm,
the beads,
               over the beads,
what to clasp and crimp,
how to make, and measure
the wrist, the string,
one by one, sliding
agate, onyx, garnet orbs
on steel wire, and in our hands
transformed
to bracelets, to moments,
bursts of color on bare skin
all jangle and clack – smooth
rolling statements of stone,
glass, and metal to turn
heads, bring a smile, say hello,
and turn again, like prayer,
like memory, counting
sixteen, seventeen, eighteen
spaces to be sure
it will fit
just right

VILLAGE OF THE UNBURIED

JIEUN PAIK

from out of my hotel room
drifting in between jagged rocks is an old man.
his whiskers tremble and for a second i think he’s
crying but he’s just losing himself to the wind.
and remembering is like reliving,
the fire cleansing only what it can destroy,
sweeping the dust of war into books,
the village evaporating upon death.
he gestures at the seagulls that are tearing at his clothes,
working his way through a conversation with his mother.
umma, he says. umma, umma, umma, like a chant,
like he’s beginning to remember and it’s paining him,
the village of unburied people,
the breath of them
heavy and panting scared under his own chestplate,
bursting out of his own mouth,
a gust of dying wind that he cradles in his arms,
and for a second it anchors him down enough so he can keep
walking on.
it cries like a small baby,
the sound crashing upon the rocks on the shore.

WOMAN IN A GOLDENROD SUMMER DRESS 

ACE BOGGESS

Joined me around the corner for a cigarette
because no one else in Richmond that night
showed daring or out-of-town bad manners
to light up in public, & what all of us want,
as humans, is a few minutes of unity.

I spoke about West Virginia & poetry.
She said she attended Virginia Tech
where, I told her, Bob Hicok taught.
A sort of famous poet, I said, he wrote
moving pieces about the shootings.

That’s when I was there, she said,
followed by a long drag & stuttering exhale
as though the shadowy turn of our conversation
made her need it more. Such a peculiar,
untimely, interconnected world in which we live.

Hard to see down paths in front,
bending toward darkness like this dialogue
between strangers that, despite its end,
was the happiest five minutes spent in what,
for me, had been a mostly perfect day.

NOWHERE  

PAM SINICROPE

A shovel in West Virginia dirt says
bury his ashes here—

so my father digs, our plan
to throw them in the Cheat River

abandoned in favor of a place to visit,
though I know we’ll never go there.

I can’t remember how my brother’s ashes
spilled from their cardboard box—

or if it bothered me—but I still see
his whittled form posed with a wristwatch

at the viewing, soul already gone.
I eulogized his discordant strutting with a guitar

while my sister and I watched Grizzly Adams.
I try to forget

his last birthday in a hospital bed,
forty ridiculous candles unlit.

I see the Cheat’s tannin undercurrents,
a blooming sugar maple as tombstone,

all of it beneath the gaze of a vacation home
we don’t own, and no one visits,

on one square acre among empty hundreds,
our family’s farm abandoned, but for logging

by my grandfather who couldn’t wait to leave
to make a life in town. Each year,

the ground’s icy overcoat will hide
the bittercress gushing over his grave

on land my mother will donate
to purge her grief, to keep it pristine

in the middle of the nowhere
any of us will go to see.

TIMEPIECE

AMELIA JONES

The spirit I have watched passed upon the ocean,
It was within the coursing breath of the breeze,
Above the surf that shone as shattered crystal;
I was immersed in light upon the levitate
Air and drew within to satiate there and incant
Through time. I travelled boundless for a while.

A duet with nature when my mind and spirit lapsed
Beyond the seal and sipped corporeal air;
Where upon my face, the dial that reflects
The hour of the day stood still…

Until the quick, by the sun, felt its warmth:
I felt the passing lips of the sun and drank the sky within,
Quenching the world anew; I was the light and summer
All at once then cooled within the clouds

I became that spirit, as infinite as sand;
In the measure of time, I held the glass globe till
All that I am slipped through my fingers.

TO MY CHILD

JEFF BURT

The white-and-black lilies are too heavy to loft in the wind.
Water’s expensive and rare, but we have shared
it with the lilies so they do not become shriveled bloom,
waxed petals pollen-strewn arid and wilting.
It is we who look diminished, our showers spaced
and short, our dishes stacked in the sink
waiting for the right day to wash.
I lose track of how long it has been
since I didn’t pray for rain.

When I teach you about stars,
I say there are millions, gazillions,
that someday scientists could reach a count,
but what I mean is to look up in awe,
to stop the data-driven process,
yet here I am stuck in the dark looking at the large dipper
and counting, and counting on, only three stars
in a handle and four to make a rectangular cup.
I am praying for rain in a sideways manner,
the way a coyote sidles up a street
hoping I can reach the handle and tip it
forward, make that ill-formed cup
you’d think pounded out in metal
pour whatever it contained.

I want to tell you of this stupidity of mine
so you will be prepared for the night
when you are deprived by death, loss,
separation, cancer, even love,
and look skyward into the starry sky
and forget awe, and focus on a single light,
and wish, and wish, and wish.
It will be okay to do that, to pray,
to extend the desperation of your thoughts
into space and attempt to configure
a constellation into satisfying your desire
knowing that it will not.

It is, after all, the better part of being human,
why we look up and out
at least half of the time, to search
what cannot give, to give to us,
why I sat with my mother breathless
from cancer asking her a story to tell
of her youth that she could not remember,
or asked a homeless man
how his day was going.

I know, as you will, that you cannot tip
the handle, the cup will not pour.
but you need to know you will try,
and you will keep on trying,
and learn it is not the failure of praying
but the triumph of continuing to ask.

TUNNELING THROUGH AMBER

MICHAEL T. YOUNG

I exit the doors of my office. Just a walk in the early autumn air.

Overhead, for the first time, I notice a figure hovering

above the archway, leaning down with a compass, a golden god

holding forth the authority of his measurements.

It’s typical of these buildings that try to recall the grandeur

of other ages. I remember the Ancient of Days from the book

of Daniel and how Blake rendered him in his famous print, though

less confident that such measurement was in our best interest,

putting Newton with a similar compass at the bottom of the ocean.

Yet measure is what it’s all about, whether a carpenter

cross-cutting, a musician tracking arpeggios down the keyboard,

or a poet composing lines by foot or fancy. I pause

to watch sunlight poke the folds of limp flags around the plaza,

and feel a warmth of summer lingering. How it trails

a light scent of freshly cut grass and watered shrubs, overlapping

memories of spring as imagination mixes with the season—

conjures walks under birdsong, through gardens in the Bronx or Paris,

or reading poets among flowers planted in our yard. 

Today, I carry a copy of Hayden Carruth’s poems, hoping for

a free bench somewhere to read even in this city’s bustle

and swarm of tourists. A bus passes down 5th Avenue, its digital sign

for the route number reading “sim1c.” And I think of

Charles Simic, a poet who survived the bombing of his home city

of Belgrade by American war planes, to land himself later

in the United States, writing poetry admired by Richard Hugo,

a poet who flew one of those planes.

I find a stretch of bench snug between people—some workers,

some visitors—all eating lunch. I try to read, but the warmth

and aroma in the air intrude again with stores of recollection

and possibilities unfolding like the bell hyacinths in spring,

the moment transformed into a grace of nostalgia, how a life

telescopes its moments, nests distinct times within

each other, until we become a home of references to other places

and times, a well of echoes. Beside me, a family speaks Russian,

and recalls the deep resonant voice of Joseph Brodsky

reciting under the high cathedral ceiling of St. John the Divine.

The family finishes and departs, replaced by a couple speaking Italian

between bites of salad, and I think of sitting under Tintorettos

in Venice’s San Rocco. I rise, breathing deeply the depth of these pasts,

so all the warm days like this rise with me and walk               

into the moment, tunneling through it like an amber, discovering

veins of precious stones, histories, even prehistories,

values buried in the air we breathe, and beyond measure.

FOR THE UNFORGOTTEN CHILDREN BURIED
AT THE BOARDING SCHOOLS.

(bring them home)

JUDY MATHEWS

Our Father who art in Heaven

Hallowed be thy name

“Twirling and talking leaves

the cottonwood reaching up

                                            up

                        toward the sky

branches stretch, its bounty”

Thy Kingdom come thy will be done

on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us

this day, our daily bread,

“woven dream catchers birling

in the wind

 silent chatter—feathers dance

petitions chanting”

As we forgive those who

trespass against us, lead us not

into temptation

“and hear a prayer of many

where graves unmarked are laid

children far from home

the cottonwood shelters their graves”

But deliver us from Evil, for You alone

are the Lord, You alone are the most High

“dreamcatchers twist and turn

capturing dark nightmares

releasing what is good

and hear the drum—It beats,

voices sing up healing

feathers talk like leaves”

Forever and ever

Amen.  

creative nonfiction

Caretta

Sheree Stewart Combs

We missed the sign to Caretta and crossed another mountain into War, West Virginia. The man we stopped to seek directions from asked, “Why on earth do you want to go to Caretta?” I explained my grandparents once lived in the coal camp and he pointed us back across the mountain.

My husband, Don, and I had come a long way to find Caretta, a now unincorporated community that once thrived on the backs of miners. I love the way Caretta rolls off the tongue, but the name’s more lyrical than what we found in 2016. One church, the shuttered Caretta Coal Company Store, an old school, and a small number of homes. Two-hundred homes stood here in the town’s heyday. Named for the Carter Coal Company owner’s wife, Etta. George Carter put ‘Car’ in front of her name and Caretta became a town. The only place in the United States that bears this name. I wondered if Etta ever set foot here.

My Papaw and Mamaw, Obie and Hettie Stewart, stepped their feet into the coal town in 1929.  Papaw had worked in the mines since age fourteen. By age twenty-two when he was hired by the Carter Coal Company he was a seasoned employee. Caretta would turn out to be the only place they lived outside the southeastern KY mountains; both more comfortable in the steeper hills of home.

 Married on February 1, 1928, my grandparents started their life together on the brink of the Great Depression. They’d known poverty all their lives and didn't have a thing to lose when the banks failed. They first made their life in a McRoberts, KY coal camp, and a year later caught the bus to Caretta when Papaw got wind of a better job with a company that offered decent housing. I’d read that Caretta was an ideal coal camp when it was built. In addition to better housing, it boasted an electrical and sewage plant.

 We drove past the tipple and coal preparation plant on our way into Caretta, but they were not the rusted out mining structures I’d seen online and hoped to photograph. Built in 2015, painted an optimistic blue, they stood in sharp contrast to the mountains that surrounded them. They spoke of the future, not the past I’d come in search of. The red-bricked company buildings, once scattered throughout the town, no longer stood. The photos I’d found online were made in the 1960’s. Much had fallen into ruin since then, but the history of the coal town gathered itself around us. I blinked away tears and trembled as the air grew thicker. Don reached for my hand.

We lost our baby thirty years before this trip to Caretta. The loss stirred in my heart on the February 6th anniversary date, and haunted me into the fall. I got it on my mind to find Caretta and visit this place sacred to Mamaw and Papaw. It’s where they buried their firstborn, a son named Herbert. Stillborn. They buried him in bitter February, far from family and friends. Only a few miners and their wives bore witness to the grief etched into their faces.

An irreparable hole opens in the fabric of the universe when a baby dies. Frozen into grief-struck statues, Mamaw and Papaw heard the angels cry on Herbert’s burial day, as legends of parents of lost children wailed in a mournful chorus. Weakened from childbirth, breasts tight with milk, Mamaw bowed her head and shivered in the cold. Papaw gripped her tighter when she lost footing. Their breath fogged the air.

Mamaw was twenty-three when they buried Herbert. I was thirty when our baby died. I’ve no grave to tend in the family cemetery. No grave site to leave behind. A surgical team at UK Medical center in Lexington saved my life when my Fallopian tube ruptured.  An ectopic pregnancy would have meant a slow, painful death in 1929. Caretta had no hospital, but maybe a company doctor or Granny Woman attended Herbert’s birth. Saw how blue and still

 he was. Met my grandparents’ eyes as the truth swam to the surface in Papaw’s brown eyes and her baby blues.

After we drove through the community in a failed attempt to locate the cemetery, we stopped at the Big Creek People in Action Community Center to ask directions. Their offices were located in the yellow-bricked school, the only place open for business in Caretta. The employees hesitated to talk with us until I told them the reason we’d come to Caretta, and they heard the mountains echo in my voice when I said “Mamaw” and “Papaw”. The director told us, “The coal company put up a ‘Keep Out’ sign.  We’re not allowed in the cemetery. I’ll show you where the road to it used to be. You can do what you want”.  Her assistant encouraged us to stop back by to look at photos of the community, many of which dated back to the time my grandparents lived here.

Whispers of voices from Caretta’s past floated in the air and blew around us in the wind.  My heart pulsed in my throat when we arrived at the cemetery. I hesitated at this intrusion into my grandparents’ private grief. Felt the same disquiet I experienced as a child when I walked in on an intimate conversation and disrupted the current that flowed between them. The full reality of Herbert's death slammed into my core. His death no longer just a story I’d been told.

 We trespassed on the land where Caretta’s dead lay buried. The mustiness in decayed leaves filled our nostrils as we pushed through a thick undergrowth of briers and brushes in search of the older section of the cemetery.  Vines snaked around scattered tombstones like a possessive mother. “These are mine now.” We broke off vines to read the names on the few stones we located, but found no grave marker to record Herbert’s death. I imagined a smooth rock with his name, date of birth and death carved into it. Perhaps by a stone mason among the miners. Italian masons were recruited through Ellis Island by coal companies at the turn of the nineteenth century to help build mining towns. We’ve seen testaments to their work in

Lynch and Benham, Kentucky, where buildings constructed of quarry stone and red brick in the early 1900’s still stand. But the face of a rock crumbles and can’t mark time forever.

We stood among the brambles, the October sun warm on our backs, as a soft breeze played with our hair. I heard a soft murmur. The sound of beating wings. Caught the milky sweetness in a baby’s breath. 

“Mama! Daddy!”

“Your baby’s safe here with Herbert and the twins we lost before Glenna was born. You should see the four of them play together. She’s a sight, just like you as a little one.

It’s alright, Child... We’re tickled you came to check on Herbert.”

Mamaw’s words echoed between the mountains as a love song. 

“Mama”.

A knot loosens in my chest and I lose footing. Don catches me before I tumble to the ground. A calmness seeps into my bones. Replaces the grief I’d labored under. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and we linger in the stillness. My grandparents’ blood sings through my veins.

It all started here in this coal camp. When Caretta flooded, and they walked five miles through the mine, and down steep steps to come out in Coalwood, West Virginia, Mamaw carried Aunt Blanche, six months old, on her hip. My mother would be born six years later.

Coal companies robbed the Appalachian people of much. Their mountains, minerals, land, water and health. A company can fence it off and put up signs, but can’t remove the peace found in a mountainside graveyard. I glanced back as we made our way out of the cemetery. The evening sun painted it golden. I reached out and caught a last echo of giggling children and placed my hand over my heart.

 My grandparents’ spirits remained close as we drove back to the old school. My eyes blurred and steps faltered as I walked past stacks of bottled water and nonperishable food, and up the stairs to the assistant’s office. I sat on a bench in the second floor hallway amid echoes from the past. A bell rang, followed by sounds of hurried feet. Squeals of laughter. A teacher’s call to order. I caught the whiff of a chalk-choked eraser and sneezed. Dust swirled in the sunlight that poured in from a tall window. Through its shimmer I met the eyes of a young girl. Then listened to her footsteps fade.  As I photographed pictures that captured the community through my grandparents’ eyes, my shoulders sagged underneath the weight of

their regret that they hadn’t shared more about their life in Caretta. My heart fell heavy because I hadn’t asked.

“A little ways down the road from here is the three-bedroom house we rented. We raised a little garden out back. The company store sold everything else we needed. The mine entrance stood up the road past our home. Obie headed that way every morning with his lunch bucket in hand and a kiss on his lips for good luck”.

 I imagined this schoolhouse awash with children. Their daddies at work. Mothers home with brooms in their hands or hunched over washboards to scrub coal dust out of their husbands’ clothes. Some with their faces blurred by steam as they ironed shirts and dresses for their children to wear the next day. Hopeful for the better life an education would provide their sons and daughters. I pictured the kids headed home after school, excited to tell their mothers about their day before they started on chores and homework. Watchful for their fathers to make it home from the mines.

I’d come full circle on this trip to West Virginia. Found peace in the place where Uncle Herbert rested in between mountains that bore my grandparent’s sorrow, eighty-seven years before. I’d gained a reprieve from the grief that clouded my days. My feet stood on

firmer ground, deeper rooted into our family history. I discovered the kinship my grandparents and I shared ran deeper than parent and child or granddaughter. We were bound forever by the umbilical cords of the babies we’d lost. They’d tend to my baby until I got there. I’d remember Herbert until I drew a last breath. Babies linked the generations, even those who never lived outside their mothers’ bodies.

 Caretta remains the prettiest name I’ve known for a coal town.

Grounded 

Myrna CG Mibus      

The windchill is 20 below zero and I’m walking across the near empty parking lot outside JoAnn Fabrics to my minivan. I have been on a wild-goose chase in search of metal thimbles, of all things, on one of the coldest nights of the year. My parents live just four miles away and although I’d normally stop by for a short visit, it’s already too late in the evening to do so. I get inside my van, settle in behind the wheel and turn the key. In that fraction of a second after I turn the key and hope that my normally reliable vehicle will start despite the cold, I think, “Well, at least I’m close to my parents’ house. If my van doesn’t start Dad can come help me.”

He’ll drive up, I think in that split second, in his green Pontiac Montana, with his stocking cap on, work gloves, boots, warm jacket. He’ll hop out of his van, wave hello then grab his jumper cables out of his box of tools and supplies in the back. He’ll walk, purposefully, looking big and strong even though he’s slightly built, to the front of my van. I will jump out and walk to him, smiling, happy that I get to help my Dad.

“Pop the hood, Myrna,” he’ll say. So, good daughter that I am, and knowledgeable when it comes to jumping a vehicle (after all, I was taught by the best), I will open the hood.

He’ll tell me to sit in his van to get warm while he jumps mine. But I’ll insist on helping him and stand in the cold. Right next to him. Where I’m supposed to be.

We will work quickly, efficiently. Dad and daughter. Side by side. Working on a car. Dad will hand me one end of the jumper cables while he hangs on to the other. Like clockwork, we’ll clamp red cables to positive terminals. My nose hairs will freeze. My toes will start to go numb so I will stomp my feet to warm them. I’ll look at Dad’s cloth-gloved hands; he isn’t feeling the cold because he’s got a job to do. 

“Okay Dad,” I will tell him when I get my negative cable in place. But he, always watching, already knows. He will clamp his negative cable to my engine’s block to ground us even before I get a chance to say, “Let’s give it a go!”

I’ll climb back into my van. Dad will climb into his and rev his engine a bit to charge my battery.

“Okay, try it,” Dad will yell out over the sound of his engine.

I will turn the key and the engine will roar to life. “You got her going!” Dad will say, as if I got my van started on my own.

We’ll be all business then, both of us smiling as we work together. Dad will unhook cables, wrap them neatly, put them away, shut both hoods then walk to my driver’s side door to say, “All right, Myrna, you’re good to go.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I will say as I shift my van into drive. “Good night.”

Dad will walk to his van and climb inside. He’ll watch me drive out of the parking lot, safely on my way and he will follow me, just a few car lengths behind, until it’s time for me to turn. He’ll give a wave as I turn, and he continues straight. I’ll wave back. And then we’ll both drive home.

This is how it’s supposed to be, I think. My Dad, big, strong, undaunted by cold and quick to drive out to help anyone in need, especially me, his daughter.

I shake my head to clear my daydream. I am in my van. It started a fraction of a second after I turned the key, despite the cold. Dad’s van is not parked across from mine. No, Dad is at home, probably resting. I’m in the parking lot outside of JoAnn Fabrics and I am doing my best not to cry because I have just remembered that Dad doesn’t drive anymore.

It’s not supposed to be like this. But it is. At first, Dad couldn’t drive because he fell off a ladder and hit his head. “Six weeks in the rigid neck brace,” the doctor said, “and no driving.” So, Mom took Dad’s place behind the wheel. We were relieved, my mother, brothers, and I, to get him off the road because we had noticed Dad’s driving wasn’t as good as it used to be. We had noticed that at 74, Dad’s once-quick brain wasn’t keeping up as well in conversations. Perhaps this “slowing down” is the cumulative effect of several falls resulting in concussions. Perhaps it’s because dementia runs in the family. At this point we don’t really know the cause, or causes. We just know that Dad is slowing down, and that after the doctor-prescribed six weeks, Dad still rides in the passenger seat instead of behind the wheel.

It’s not supposed to be like this. No, Dad always drives and he’s strong and fit and tall as Paul Bunyan even though he’s only five foot seven. Daddy can leap over a fence in one smooth motion, flying over magically and safely landing on the ground. He races me from point A to B and somehow, even though I know Daddy is really, really fast, I always beat him to the finish line and he grins from ear to ear when I win. I’m tagging along at his side, handing him tools as he teaches me how to change the oil, struggling to keep my cool as he teaches me how to drive, smiling big when he hands me the keys to my first car, a car he found just for me, a well-used but extremely safe 1976 Pontiac Sunbird two-door coupe.

It’s not supposed to be like this, I think. My van’s engine rumbles at idle; the heater feebly kicks out air, but it does not warm me. I pull off a glove to wipe away my tears. I’m in my van. Dad did not jump start it. My minivan started without a problem when I turned the key.

It’s not supposed to be like this, I think as I put my van into gear, slowly drive out of the parking lot and wave good-bye to the darkness where my Daddy is supposed to be. 

AN INDEX OF TRANSITION

ELIAS JOEL DONSTAD

A

Alcohol, my substance of choice. The thing that when I stopped, started my transition.

Always, as in always knew they were different. Always felt sure they weren’t a girl. Always certain. Not like me, always afraid, always unsure, coming out at 24, well past puberty, vacillating between hyper-femininity and experimentation with masculinity for a decade before putting language to my feelings of being an outsider.

Anesthesia, what they use to put me under when I get top surgery, changing my body radically, removing breasts, a main source of dysphoria, and giving me a male-contoured chest.

Anneliese, the name of a Barbie princess, but also the name that my parents put on my birth certificate. The name I discard and change.

B

Be a girl.

Be a good girl.

Be a good girl or you won’t get ice cream.

Be a good girl or you won’t get into heaven.

Be a good girl or you won’t get to hang out with your friends.

Be a man.

Be not afraid, what angels say to humans in the Bible. I doubt that line works. 

Bible, a weapon wielded by parents, pastors, friends, acquaintances.

Binder, what I get from the internet and have shipped discretely to my address so I can compress my chest and pretend like I don’t have breasts. Three years before I come out, I only wear it when I’m alone and stare at myself in the mirror for hours.

Breasts, the ones that start to grow in late elementary school before any of my classmates do. A symbol that I’m alone, growing too fast, growing wrong.

Breathtaking, how wearing a binder feels, especially when I can’t go out in public without it, when the effects of compressing my lungs and ribs start to become constant.

C

Change, as in change genders, change lives, change everything.

Change my clothes to attempt to masculinize myself, signal my gender.

Clock, like telling the time or being able to tell that I wasn’t born a boy.

Clocky, how I feel, how I’m described by another trans man who’s been doing this longer, who can tell I don’t know how to pack or walk or talk or dress.

D

DDD, the size of breasts, a measurement only useful for ordering clothes online, or a measurement for how much you want to surgeon to take off, how much of your body you don’t like.

Double-incision mastectomy, the name of surgery, the operation I undergo to feel more at home in my body.

Doubt, a feeling I’m asked if I have by a friend the first time he sees me after surgery, like he doesn’t think someone can radically change their body in this way without doubt.

E

Elias, the name I chose after scattering all the letters from my first name onto a table, rearranging them, googling baby names that contained the same letters. A ritual, an alchemy, another step in becoming me.

Endocrinologist, as in the doctor who is making me a man.

Endocrinologist, located in the Women’s Reproductive Clinic.

Envy, as in gender envy, as in wanting to have skin that fits, wanting to know what it would be like to be at home without renovations.

F

Fuck.

Fuck me.

Fuck this.

Fuck up.

Fucked.

Fucked without consent, the event that my father uses to ask me why I would want to be man if I was raped by one, like what’s done to my body defines it, like any crime done by a member of a gender would make the entire gender denounceable.

Fucking tired of justifying myself.

G

Gazillionaire, what I would have to be to afford the transition I want, with surgeries and gel testosterone instead of needles.

Gynecologist, or the doctor I see in a center designed for women, reminding me of the incongruence between my sex and the sex I want.

H

Hyperaware of my body.

Hyperaware of the way I walk, move my hips and hands.

Hyperaware that I don’t pass, that going into the men’s restroom would get me odd looks.

Hyperaware that someone in the women’s restroom sees me as too masculine to be there by the way she studies my flat chest for evidence of breasts that were chopped off months ago.

Hyperaware that the cashier clocks me as female before I’m even called ma’am while my groceries are scanned.

Hyper-feminine before coming out, owning more dresses than pants, growing my hair out for four years, cutting it as a way to ease myself into a presentation of masculinity, a world I didn’t feel certain that would accept me, not sure if I would ever find belonging.

I

Identity, as in gender identity, the labels I impose on myself to explain my body, my mind, my experiences, my need for medical care.

J

Judge, the person I have to go to for a name change, who has the power to deny me identification.

K

Kill, like “I’d kill to be seen as a boy,” or “I’ll kill myself if this gender thing gets much harder.”

L

Love, as in self-love, as in the point of all of this.

Love, like same-sex love, like I can even know whether my love is same-sex or not with the complication I’ve given my sex by trans-ing it.

M

My body, my choice.

N

Name change, as in the legal process of changing my name. First having to publish it in a local paper, then presenting an affidavit to the judge, pleading my case, hoping it becomes law, hoping it becomes real.

Name, Elias, made legal October 25, 2023.

Name, not given but chosen.

O

Other, as in not like the others, outside, not on the inside, not feeling like myself on the inside, outside myself.

P

Penis, as in envy, as in I guess I have penis envy.

Phalloplasty, a surgery my endocrinologist says is nearly impossible to get.

Q

Quiet, as in keep quiet about your deviance, don’t tell anyone why you aren’t allowed out of the house, under our control because you are a minor. Stop being quiet when you’re an adult and away from your parents.

R

Risks, like risks of surgery, like high risk, high reward.

S

Scars across my chest, replacing my breasts.

Serenity, as in “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Serenity, as in “God grant me the serenity to accept the vagina I cannot change, the power to get surgeries and take hormones I can, and the wisdom to wait for bottom growth.”

Silas, the runner-up for names after Elias. My friend Mike once accidentally called me Silas, and I like to think in an alternate universe all is the same except I chose the same “Silas,” and Mike accidentally called me “Elias” in that universe, and then we had the same conversation.

Skin grafts, like the one I see on Jack’s forearm, recognize the evidence of a phalloplasty.

Suicide rates, extremely high among the transgender population.

Suicide, taking trans youth before they have a chance to grow up.

T

Testosterone, a Schedule III drug, the golden liquid I stab into myself every week to deepen my voice, grow hair in places there was none, and feel like myself.

Therapist, glorified letter writer to get me the surgery I want.

Tip, as in just the tip, or tip of the iceberg, tipping over the edge.

Tits, chop them off.

Top surgery, the slang for the a double mastectomy, the surgery I waited for, jumped through hoops for, went into medical debt for. The surgery that allowed me to look in the mirror again.

Too much, what living in this body feels like some days, less days than when I had breasts.

U

Under, put under for surgery, the best nap I’ve ever had.

Underboob sweat, a sensation I didn’t have for the first time the summer after top surgery.

V

Vagina, marking me as female, still bleeding every few months while testosterone fucks with my hormones, not quite stopping the cycle, just changing it.

Viagra, the drug for erectile dysfunction a trans male friend took to try and increase his bottom growth (it didn’t work).

W

Waking up after surgery, seeing dull yellow lights instead of the bright florescent lights of the operating room where I was anesthetized for surgery. Seeing a nurse watching my vitals and there to give me Jello and wheel me back into a waiting room.

Waking up for the first time without breasts. Waking up able to lay my hand flat against my chest.

Want to be seen as a man, want to be gendered correctly.

Want to be seen as me.

Wish I didn’t have to justify my gender to doctors and strangers who feel entitled to my medical information because I’m trans, a social anomaly. 

Wish I didn’t need such radical intervention to feel like myself.

X

X, the gender marker, distinct from M or F. A trans woman asked me if I was changing my gender marker to X or M. I want to be recognized and simultaneously inconspicuous, so I choose M.

Y

You, who I have sometimes replaced for “me” or “I” in the index. And I don’t always know Y.

Z

Zero chance I’ll detransition.

Zero chance I’ll regret my surgery.

Zero chance I’ll regret my transition.

Zero, the amount of fucks I give about approval on my gender choices.

Zero, the chances of my parents calling me my real name and using male pronouns and language to refer to me.

TOTALLY CONSCIOUS:
A FAINTING STORY

Marcia Chamberlain

I.

The Ritual

I was 12 the first time I fainted in a hospital. I remember studying the white sheets covering my neighbor’s leg as I smiled and joked with her. With each minute, the banter in the room became more muffled, and the silence inside me began to pulsate.

That was the first of many hospital faints. The clamminess would overcome me like clockwork whenever I stepped into a hospital. A slow throbbing. Roaring waves. A fall into the abyss.  

Hospitals were familiar places during my childhood. The children’s hospital where my sister lived and received care for a rare neurological disorder. The regional hospital where my mom was helicoptered after her car crash. The general hospital where my dad had multiple ear surgeries. The cancer hospital where my friends Allen and Julie got their chemo.

Before every visit, I breathed deeply and willed myself to remain conscious, but fainting became a hospital ritual.

Once my body memorized how to do it, I could not unlearn it.

I became obsessed with figuring out why.

II.

The New England Journal of Medicine

I turned to the world of science for an answer. With a handful of faints under my belt, I went to our local library, and the librarian showed me The New England Journal of Medicine. She taught me how to look up information to jot down in my fainting journal. My mom bought it for me to use as a daily diary, but I never felt compelled to record what I ate for breakfast or wore to school. I was 13 and wanted to fill my journal with important, substantial, life-changing information.

I ditched my curly lettering in favor of a neat, professional script and wrote in my journal:

1.       Children with heart murmurs are more likely to faint.

This was the first fact I recorded. According to my pediatrician, Dr. Milanovich, I had a heart murmur. I assumed this heart defect must hold a clue to my fainting spells.

2.       Children with blood sensitivity are more likely to faint.

I was blood-phobic, so hospitals posed a particularly scary threat for me because blood seemed to be oozing out of every corner.

3.       Children with the congenital long QT gene are more likely to faint.

Did I have the QT gene? I didn’t know. I wanted to ask Dr. Milanovich to test me, but I worried he would think I was a hypochondriac, so I just put an asterisk next to this fact and added: 90% sure I possess the QT gene.

Due to the clinical setting in which my faints happened, I acquired lots of unsolicited knowledge. Medical staff informed me that most fainting occurs due to low blood sugar, anemia, dehydration, standing up too quickly, severe pain, blood pressure drops, and emotional trauma. Nurses kindly instructed me: If you feel lightheaded, eat something, lie down, elevate your legs, loosen your clothing, and apply moist towels to your face.

Unfortunately, as my brain lost oxygen, it didn’t function as sharply as I would have liked. I would feel a flush of heat and then hear roaring in my ears. Once that began, it was hard to pull back, much less follow instructions to apply towelettes to my face.

During one hospital visit, when I started to feel woozy, a PA told me about a gadget called a Reveal Insertable Loop Recorder (RLR). When inserted beneath the skin, it registers signals that may occur too fast for the fainter to recognize. It can give doctors valuable information and help develop treatment plans for people who suffer from syncope, the medical word for fainting.

I desperately wanted to see what this machine would say about me, but no one besides me seemed to think my fainting was a big enough deal to warrant the RLR. As my best friend at school told me, “Fainting’s not exactly fatal.”

III.

God

When I couldn’t settle on a definitive medical reason for my fainting, a pesky alternative crept into my brain. What if the cause of my fainting wasn’t medical? What if it was religious?

I was a United Methodist preacher’s kid. Everything—everything—came back to God. Once the question occurred to me, it wouldn’t disappear, looping around the track inside my brain, buzzing without end.

So, in ninth grade, I launched phase two of my fainting investigation, which involved—what else?—Bible study. While my peers collected and memorized The Cure lyrics, I busied myself compiling all the Bible verses about fainting that I could find.

Job 23:16

God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me.

Isaiah 51:20

Your children have fainted; they lie at every street corner, like antelope caught in a net. They are filled with the wrath of the LORD, with the rebuke of your God.

Galatians 6:9

And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not.

Luke 21:26

Men will faint from fear and anxiety over what is coming upon the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

This research project took an excessive amount of time. I would pick a random book, like Leviticus or Job or Lamentations, and skim it, dragging my finger over each line, searching for any mention of faint, fainting, fainted. It was not an effective research method, but I did find more than half of the 62 references to fainting by carefully combing my Bible night after night.

Whenever I found a new verse, I would feel a jolt of satisfaction. My favorite one was an  Old Testament verse directed toward the Israelites who were worn out from living for so many years in exile.

Isaiah 40:31

But those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not faint.

This verse comforted me with its imagery of renewable energy and soaring eagles; most of the fainting verses I found focused on God’s wrath and the end of the world.

This Biblical phase of my research was less public than my bio-medical phase, but it was revelatory. It taught me that there are plenty of non-medical reasons people faint, at least in ancient Hebrew times. I carefully divided the verses I stumbled across into categories, such as “fainting from lack of faith” and “fainting due to sinful behavior.” To my teen brain, these reasons seemed like secret contenders for the fainting episodes I experienced in hospitals.

IV.

Jane

At the same time as I was doing my Biblical research, I was reading the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness, hiding it under my pillow and sneaking in snippets when the house was dark.

At night, I’d read sections of Radclyffe Hall’s novel and shiver, worrying that fainting was God’s punishment for my lesbian desires. Even though the novel’s main character, Stephen, begs readers to see her “sexual inversion” as God-given, the storyline makes it seem like God is dead set on punishing this woman for her “masculine” name and tailored suits. I cried at the end when Stephen did not end up living happily ever after with Mary, the love of her life. She ends up alone in a “well of loneliness”—not exactly upbeat reading for a 14-year-old lesbian.

Secretly, I worried my story might not end well either, but I just couldn’t stamp down my feelings. I was bedeviled with Jane, the girl in my Latin class. I drooled over how she dribbled a basketball between her legs. I daydreamed about her acid-washed jeans and pink polo shirt. While my friends obsessed over posters of boy bands, I had eyes only for Jane and her pixie cut. Every school morning, my heart raced when I saw her walk into Latin class, and I imagined kissing her in a stall in the girl’s bathroom.

I didn’t want to turn my back on religion, but my 9th-grade heart was already telling me that there would be no contest if it came to a showdown between Jesus and Jane.

V.

Opossums

Once I gave up on religion as supplying the answer to my fainting problem, I shifted my attention to the animal kingdom for insights. As an introvert who believed she could communicate with fireflies, I’m not surprised it occurred to me that animals in my own backyard might hold the key to my fainting rather than the QT gene or God.

I grew up in rural Virginia, so this phase of my research literally entailed walking out my back door. I already knew opossums were fainters, and in my neck of the woods, there were so many opossums that they were the featured ingredient in stews and pot pies. Near my house, it was common to see “dead” opossums on the road with drool running out of their mouths and their front feet curled into stiff balls. What did they have to teach me about fainting?

When an opossum faces a dangerous situation and can’t escape, it faints, and this involuntary response causes it to go into shock for up to four hours.

As I jotted down animal observations in my fainting journal, it occurred to me that maybe I was shutting down in hospitals because my body felt the best way to get through a stressful situation was to check out, like an opossum.

There was some wisdom in that.

The nurses had mentioned that one cause of fainting is emotional trauma, and for sure, it terrified me to hear my sister scream when the therapists at the children’s hospital manipulated her legs during hydrotherapy. Seeing my dad emerge from the ICU, his head covered in white bandages, was upsetting. How could I blame myself for trying to escape the best way I knew how?

I put stars in the margins of my notes so I’d know I’d made a particularly noteworthy discovery: the animal kingdom had revealed to me that stress—not girls!—might be at the bottom of my fainting episodes.

VI.

The Victorian Era

By the end of 10th grade, I considered myself an amateur expert on fainting. I hadn’t gotten to the bottom of why I fainted, but I knew a lot.

This knowledge came in handy when I took a class where we read Victorian literature. Novels from the 19th century feature many swooning women. Like me, Victorian women fainted a lot—in ballrooms, courtrooms, city parks, and sitting rooms, but figuring out why Victorian women fainted was as tricky as figuring out why I fainted.

Was it the corset that made some Victorian women faint? Tightly laced corsets can squash the lungs and constrict breathing.

When I was 12, my mother gave me an underwire bra that made it hard to take a deep breath, much less climb a tree, and she showed me how to wiggle my hips and squeeze my tummy into a girdle before a piano recital or church service.

By 16, though, I had ditched these constrictive undergarments and filled my closet with boxer shorts, sweatpants, and oversized t-shirts. Since I still fainted when I visited hospitals, it was clear clothing wasn’t the culprit.

Studying Victorian literature was how I discovered that arsenic might have contributed to the fainting spells experienced by Victorian women. Arsenic, a metalloid that affects the nervous system, appeared in the wallpaper of many Victorian homes, and some researchers think it may have contributed to fainting spells. My mind ruminated on the flowery wallpaper in my bedroom, wondering if it contained traces of arsenic and was slowly poisoning me.

An anxiety-prone child, I spent my free time in the living room. We had a stiff, uncomfortable couch in the living room, which I pretended was a Victorian fainting couch similar to the ones in novels. Daybeds were often found in fainting rooms where middle and upper-class Victorian women would retire after bouts of “hysteria.” I was sure that a fainting couch—with its raised back, curvy frame, and tufted cushions—would be the first furniture I’d own as a grown-up.

I remember one book with a picture of an unconscious woman in a corset, with pale complexion and rosy cheek, gracefully draped across a fainting couch while a midwife bent over her with smelling salts and performed “pelvic stimulation.” As a budding lesbian, the imagery of the midwife “helper” came as a surprise. Fainting couches became fixtures in my fantasies.

VII.

La Petite Mort

By the end of my high school years, I had decided that fainting might have something to do with the over-the-top way I experienced life. My world shimmered with 24/7 intensity.

The week after graduating high school, I boarded a plane for Europe. The trip was supposed to be a glorious celebration, a solo adventure before heading off to college.

After eight hours in the air, I landed in the Netherlands. The melancholy in my jaw and cheeks had shifted down into my legs. How would I drag the world’s sadness, like a bag full of rocks, through the streets of Amsterdam?

It was too early to check into a hostel, so I rode the tram to the Basilica of St. Nicholas in the Old Centre District. In the cathedral, it smelled like incense and dust. I sat down on a pew. Above me was a tapestry of saints looking at one another across a dome of geometric splendidness. Alabaster, emerald, crimson, and azure danced in the light.

Sitting in St. Nicholas’s, I knew I wanted relief from the bags of rocks and the domes of splendidness. It all felt like too much.

Psychoanalysts sometimes say fainting is like la petite mort, a state of unconsciousness sometimes experienced after orgasm. The term can also be generic for any feeling of unconsciousness that follows transcendence or deep melancholy. I knew exactly what that felt like and wondered if fainting allowed me to briefly transcend the “too muchness” of life.

But, as the French would say, fainting was la petite mort, a little death. I wanted the big one, the real deal, the whole shebang.

That night, I stayed in the busiest section of the Red Light District. When I checked in, I had a timeline for how to end my life and a bottle of pills that I thought would end it.

As evening descended, I didn’t count on sharing my room with a friendly group of international tourists. Austrians, French, Italians, Germans, and Poles were in and out of the room all night, plopping down on my lower bunk, smoking cigarettes, and chatting in mixed languages about cheap drugs and sexual escapades. The angel of death refused to visit me in this bunkhouse. At the break of day, I had barely slept and only taken a handful of the pills.

VIII.

The Oncology Floor

Many years later, I was living with my girlfriend—later-to-be wife—in Texas. I had been religiously avoiding hospitals for some time and had not fainted in years.

To everyone’s surprise—most of all,  my own—I got a job in a hospital.

I wasn’t employed as the doctor I imagined I’d become as a 13-year-old. Instead, I was a roving writer who did bedside creative writing with children diagnosed with cancer.

The day I began working in the oncology unit, I was nervous for a lot of reasons. The biggest one was that I hadn’t mentioned my phobia of hospitals or my history of fainting when I interviewed for the job.

After washing up, I slipped on gloves, gown, mask, and shoe covers, hoping I was following proper protocol. Inside, I was panicking. What would happen if I ended up face-first on the floor while a patient was dictating her poem to me?

The first child on my list was José, a boy from Mexico getting treatment in the U.S. I didn’t know his prognosis or his treatment plan, and it didn’t matter. I was at his bedside as a writer, not a doctor. I invited him to tell a story.

His eyes were bright and his voice animated. The next twenty minutes flew by as I got down his story just the way he wanted.

As he read it aloud to his mom, a switch flipped.

I could enter a hospital room and leave on the same two feet.

IX.

The Gift of Fainting

When I reflect on my fainting years, I’m still unsure what to make of them.

What caused my fainting? Was it the heart murmur diagnosed by Dr. Milanovich? The underwire bras? The despair of seeing those I love in the hospital? The wallpaper in my childhood bedroom? A congenital long QT gene? God?

And the flip side: what caused me to stop fainting?

Recently, I made a helpful discovery: the word faint is a distant cousin of the word fiction.

I’m starting to accept that narrative may be my best option for understanding the ambiguous world of fainting. My pencil may offer more clarity than a Reveal Insertable Loop Recorder.

Novelist Tim O’Brien writes that when confronted with the unknowable, we must turn to fiction to fashion something that makes sense: “That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.”

This makes me wonder if I should leave the world of nonfiction and try my hand at a novel. I could write about a girl who faints over and over and over for no discernible reason and then inexplicably stops. I could make it a coming-of-age story. Or a coming-out story. Or both.

If Tim O’Brian is right, I might learn something new and surprising about my own fainting through my fictional character’s eyes.

In the meantime, I am thankful for what my history with fainting has given me: the chance to be more fully here today, alive and totally conscious.

fiction

GRACE

LISSA STAPLES

“It won’t be long now, Lisbeth,” Aunt Jean says quietly to my mother, looking at the pale figure of my grandmother who is lying in bed. Mama nods and wipes her eyes with a tissue.

I don’t know how to judge whether she’s talking about days, hours or minutes. It’s that time in the afternoon when the light becomes golden and my mother usually calls me to wash the vegetables for dinner except that Nana is dying and we had to drive here very quickly, so there will be no kitchen work tonight.

My grandmother has melted away since we last visited three weeks ago and is so thin that her straight nose resembles a beak. Her lips are two bluish lines, slack and slightly open as if she were ready to receive Communion. She has very little hair and even her eyebrows have disappeared. I’ve never before seen the faint frost of whiskers on her chin, a sign that she is very old. Her blue-veined hands lie on top of the blankets, her fingers twisted and swollen. I don’t like the way she looks now so I think about how her eyes are green like a pine tree and how we laughed the summer before last when she took me on a picnic in her red convertible and it rained so hard. And then when we got home, instead of going inside, she pulled me onto the grass and said, “Dance with me, Grace!” And so I jumped around, which was all I knew about dancing, while she swayed with her arms out, our faces turned to the dripping sky, mouths open like funnels which is hard to do when you’re laughing. Even Mama joined us and by the easy way she kicked off her shoes, it seemed to me she had done this before.

Now, Nana’s eyes are closed and only her nostrils move as she breathes. There is not much conversation and only in quiet voices as if she is sleeping and not to be disturbed.

Her stillness reminds me of the dead lamb at the farm this past August and how small its body was, how unnaturally still. My father dug the grave, sweat rolling down his face. The ground was not easy and I heard the ping and crunch of stones as he stabbed it with the shovel. Bluebottles crawled into the lamb’s eyes, ears and nose. Even its mouth and little pink tongue were black and hideous with insects but my father did not cry so I didn’t either. When the hole was deep enough, he lifted the muddied body as though it were no more than a sack of flour and laid it carefully in the ground. I helped him shovel the soil back, pushing it in with my hands and then he stomped all over the top with his heavy boots so the coyotes wouldn’t get into it, or at least he hoped not. Finally, he put the shovel away in the barn, slapping his hands on his pant legs and we went into the house for dinner. I know where the grave is although there’s no marker. I could find it even in the snow.

My family fills Nana’s small bedroom. Papa stands by the tall dresser, calm and relaxed. It is how I recognize him when he walks into a room, not by his height or his large hands, but by the easy way his body flows which is the way he rides a horse, always in balance with the animal and always in control. My cousin, Little John, who’s not as tall as I am but older by a year, sniffles and Papa bends down, takes John’s good hand and whispers something in his ear. John nods and I can see that he means to control himself but when he looks toward our grandmother, he comes undone again and turns into the comfort of my father’s arms.

Little John’s big brother, Thomas, leans against the door picking at his fingernails with a toothpick. He keeps wiping his eyes and I worry that he will poke himself.  He calls me his ‘little sister’ and takes after my father with his honest nature. I know that if John makes a promise, he keeps it, such as the winter three years ago when he told Nana he would shovel the snow from her driveway and he did although there were many storms that year and he got so sick with fever the doctor put him to bed. Even then, I heard he snuck out and shoveled her driveway in his pajamas and heavy coat. And he keeps my secrets, too. Like the one about the library book I’d accidentally damaged and was afraid to return. He asked to see the book and agreed that dropping it in the bath was unfortunate and, yes, it was not fit to be on the library shelf anymore. After dinner he, Little John and Aunt Jean left but when I went to bed that night, the book was gone. Miss Harris at the library never said another word about the damage and treated me with the same kindness she did the other children.

Their mother, my Aunt Jean, who likes to keep people busy, stands at the footrail with her thick arms crossed, her legs planted and a stern look on her wide face. Sometimes she frightens me with her roughness and I avoid going to her if I need a cut washed out although I saw her care for her dog, Molly, after she was hit by a car and lost an eye. For all the weeks of her healing, Molly never left my aunt’s side, often leaning against her leg as if that was her safe place. My aunt would reach down and press her close, talking to her in a soft voice the way one should to a child. Still, she is Thomas and Little John’s mother and that must count for something.

Mama sits on the edge of the bed holding Nana’s hand. She is crying silently, wiping her eyes with a raggy tissue. Unlike my father, my mother cries easily even when she’s happy. The sun will come out after a snowstorm making every surface sparkle so brightly that I have to squinch my eyes to see anything but sure enough, my mother will sigh, “Will you look at that!” as her eyes overflow. When she wraps her arm around my waist, I can feel her body vibrate as she holds in all those tears.

“Everyone’s here, Mama,” she says to Nana. Her voice wavers and her chin trembles. She brushes a tendril of hair from Nana’s cheek, her fingers lingering as if no one else is in the room.

Nana takes a breath and quite unexpectedly, she says my name. I look at my mother, not sure what to do. Her eyes widen in surprise but she gets up from the bed and motions for me to sit in her place. I take my grandmother’s ancient hand as I saw my mother do, careful of the knobby bones and spotted skin. The whole room seems to hold its breath and listen. Nana grips my hand with a strength I didn’t expect and pulls me toward her. As I lean in, she whispers to me but they’re sounds without shape or meaning. She gasps for air, mumbles some more, then her hand relaxes until it’s heavy in mine and I sense a change in her as if she’s made a decision of some kind. Her breathing sounds different, uneven. Even her hand seems cooler although not yet like the poor lamb, but soon, too soon she will be lowered into darkness and covered in dirt and then I’ll never see her again. I wipe away tears and feel eyes on the back of my head.

Little John is frowning at me. It’s the look he gets when it’s not his turn and I’m used to that. But Aunt Jean stares right through me as if she’s been injured in some way. I look down at the floor. I have no idea why my grandmother chose me and not my aunt who I think wants me to tell everyone what Nana said, but I can’t describe the odd sounds she made.

They’re all staring at me now and my face gets hot as if I’ve done something wrong. Without thinking, I run out of the room, down the short hallway into the kitchen and out the front door, down the wooden steps and along the dirt path to the far corner of the yard where the metal swing set is. I can’t go any further without climbing the wall, so I kick the metal pole as hard as I can but it doesn’t change anything. Death is coming for Nana just like these long shadows creeping across the grass, bony fingers searching for something to swallow. The darkness reaches my shoes and I jump backwards with a cry.

The front door opens and closes and I hear the creak of the third step, then the swish of Thomas’ long stride through the grass. He takes my hand and squeezes it in comfort but doesn’t say anything while we stare at the swing set that Little John and I played on just a few months ago. It’s as if I’ve never seen it before: it’s not a shiny red playground, it’s just a rickety set of swings, faded and rusty and I will never play on it again because I’m too old now. I try to tell this to Thomas but I have no voice, so I give him my fiercest eyes.

“It’s okay, little sister. When you’re ready, I’m here.”

The stairs creak again and my father calls my name softly. I run to him, clinging to his neck as he lifts me. He strokes my hair with one hand until my sobs become hiccups and all too soon, he sets me down and wipes my cheeks with his broad thumbs, a small smile on his face and those brown eyes that never look through me but always greet me with kindness. As Thomas kneels to tie my shoe, he looks up at me and smiles sideways like we have a secret. I cannot stay upset: I smile back at him. My face must look swollen and red but neither of them says anything about how I should wash up and blow my nose. Most importantly, they don’t ask me what Nana said even though they must be curious as I’m the only one she had a message for. I have never been treated like this by any adult and I tuck the feeling away to look at later. It is the second strange gift I have received today.

I am sleepy with yawns. My bed at home is soft and warm with the promise of sweet dreams, and all the shadows are friends.

“Do you think people dream as they die, Papa?” I ask my father.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but it sounds nice. What do you think, Thomas?”

“I’m counting on it,” my cousin says. “But not for a long time,” he assures me.

Aunt Jean calls us from the doorway, “Paul. Thomas. You’d better come.” There is urgency in her voice.

Nana’s room is soft with yellow lamplight. We encircle the bed. Nobody talks. I don’t dare move. Something is different about my grandmother. She is made of bone. There are sounds in her throat as if she’s drowning and I’m about to beg my mother to call for help when a great sigh of air whooshes from her mouth and then a profound silence. No one moves for a long moment.

“Mama,” I whisper.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Nana’s not breathing.”

“I know.” She presses her wet cheek to mine. “I know,” she says again.

I hear gulps and sobs. It’s Aunt Jean. She reaches for my mother like Little John reaches for me. Mama goes to her and they embrace, rocking each other. Thomas has turned away but his shoulders shake. Little John limps over to me and I bend to hug him, careful of his poor crooked back. And then I hear a sound of pain I don’t recognize but I know right away it’s my father. I stare at him for I have never seen him cry and never like this - arms hanging at his sides, eyes shut tightly and this hollow sound pouring out of his twisted mouth. My father – who gentles animals, is like a father to Thomas and Little John, and always knows what to do - is helpless. Mama gets to him first.

“Oh Paul, this may be hardest for you,” she says.

He nods his head and falls into her arms. This is another mystery for me to figure out. I feel the shapes of Thomas, Little John and then Aunt Jean whose large, heavy hand settles on my waist, pulls me to her side gently but firmly just as I saw her do with her dog and who, to my enormous surprise, kisses the top of my head. And then it comes to me. 

Nana said, “Grace” and everyone thought she was asking for me because that is my name. But maybe she was giving us her blessing. I think as hard as I can about what she was trying to say barely an hour ago, firming up the dull consonants and the vague vowels until they fall miraculously into place. I almost jump up and down wanting to tell everyone what Nana said, but I have learned that I get to choose when and how I tell a secret, and now is not a good time.

I untangle myself from the group and go to my grandmother, or at least what looks like her, for she is dreaming now and has no use for her body. I place my fingers on her hand, uncomfortable about touching death, but she is still soft and warm. She is not like the lamb at all. I don’t want anyone to hear me so I whisper that when the sun brightens our faces tomorrow, I will tell them what was meant for each of us –

“Grace… Lisbeth, Jean… Thomas…‘iddle John… Paul.”

And then something more…I close my eyes and mimic the sounds she made, the small movements of her lips, until I think I must have it right. It’s the only thing that makes sense, what she always said when it was time to go home while also telling us we would see her again.

Thomas kneels next to me. I hold his hand or he holds mine. I can hear Nana’s voice in my head, see her waving to me from her car, her front door, at the gate of my school; I can see her smile and feel the pressure of her kiss on my cheek.

“She said bye-” I say, then can get no further. But Thomas and I don’t need a lot of words between us. His eyes widen in understanding and he nods, then looks at Nana and whispers for me,

“Bye for now.”

HOLDING IMAGES

T. BEN BRYANT

The paper sits patiently. I wonder if it can sense it has been altered in some fundamental way. I dump chemicals over it. A smooth motion. Even. Continuous. Total. An image rushes onto the paper. Clear and present. 1/500 of a second of light trapped forever. Saya stares up at me from the tray. Her eyes distracted. Lips parted as if about to speak. I have to stop my hand from touching her. She isn’t real. A memory. A ghost. Something lost in the broken torrent of time. I keep a book of them. These images of the lost. The left behind or the leavers. Chronological. Carefully preserved and maintained. Rarely observed. 

I take Saya from the tray and hang her from a thin line in my living room. For six years she hung her clothes on the same line. Now her clothes hang less than an hour away. I glance at the balcony window. Imagine I can see her building.  

The spring sun will dry the paper. It will curl and I will press it flat between two heavy books. I sit on the sofa and watch my birds. After a while I get angry. I never should have bought the sofa. The vile green thing annoys me. Disposing of it is a hassle. Tokyo has such specific requirements for the disposal of anything. I don’t feel like paying more to get rid of it than I paid for it. It remains. Saya disappeared.

I go for a walk. The park is empty during the middle of the day. The weekend crowds have vanished. The cherry blossoms have almost fallen and the ground is littered with petals turning brown and black in the shadows. Decay holds no beauty for the onlookers. They only desire the soft pinks and whites of life floating by.

I sit under a tree and watch the sun reflect on the water. The koi rise and make small noises when the surface is stirred. They break the amber scales of the water with their orange and black and white before descending once more into the murk. Waterbirds stalk along the edges. Feeding. Insects disappear down violent red gullets. The sun falls behind the buildings surrounding the park and incandescent bulbs crack to life and throw dirty orange light over everything.

I forgot to leave a lamp lit. My birds are screaming in the gloom. When I turn on the light they calm down. Saya is curled on the line. Only the edge of her sweater is visible. I remove the tiny yellow clips and unfurl the paper. No spots. Clear. Precise. Preserved in platinum salts and sunlight. I put the print between two large books. A collection of landscapes and a book of Degas ballerinas. Saya will become herself again in time. All distortions erased and forgotten. I take a copy of Ficcones from the cabinet and sit on the vile green sofa. Borges escapes me and I cannot concentrate on the plots. I think about how I always teeter on the edge of control and totally fucking my life up. I assume I crossed that line long ago but the blessing of the truly fucked is never truly knowing.

I wake up. The sun is throwing shadows on the floor. My eyes are stinging. Raw. Persistent itch. I must have touched them with the salts on my fingers. It happens more than it should. I sit up and drink the last of a cup of tea that lay forgotten on the table. It is weak. Only a little bitter. I carefully lift the Degas book. Hoping there are no tears in the print. Saya lays perfectly flat. More still than I had ever seen her. The only way I could ever see her from now. I sit and study her for what feels like hours. It can only be a few moments. The steady pulse of time temporarily distorted and suspended and broken. Angry at a moment stolen and kept safe from the endless decay. I place Saya on a hard rubber mat and trim the edges of the paper to form a perfect eleven by eleven square. The discarded pieces fall to the floor in slow and unreal turbulence. I run my fingers along the edge. No burrs. Sharp. I run them over the surface of her face. The feel of skin is not there. It never is. A small high whisper of finger on platinum shadow. There is only the tight weave of the paper and the disappointment. It is all the ever remains.

THE LIPSTICK PLANT

HOPE YANCEY

The plant’s dark, glossy leaves were healthy and vibrant. Red flowers that resembled miniature lipstick tubes blossomed all over. Their buds reminded Roxana of the tiny lipsticks from a set she had when she was a little girl. She recalled the faint artificial taste of the lipsticks. Nothing like the ones she used today. She kept the plant on the table next to the kitchen window where ample amounts of late afternoon sun streamed. Sometimes, she moved it to the dining room to take advantage of the morning sun. This plant needed plenty of indirect light. Other than that, it wasn’t too demanding. It even cleaned the indoor air. She liked houseplants, especially those that were air purifiers.

Although there were many varieties of lipstick plant, Roxana favored this one, scientific name Aeschynanthus radicans Krakau. To her, it was the most reminiscent of lipstick, and lipstick was important in her life. She owned a fledgling natural cosmetics and toiletries company that eschewed animal ingredients, animal testing, and anything harmful. She’d become fed up after each news report about benzene inadvertently winding up in some brand of spray sunscreen or dry shampoo. She wanted to launch her own cosmetics company. She found inspiration in history in the form of Hazel Bishop’s talent for cosmetic chemistry. The woman doesn’t get enough credit, she thought. She made lipsticks with staying power, but how many people know her name?

Roxana’s goal when she started the company was for it to be financially lucrative enough that her own name would be a household word. Instead, she found herself struggling to stay in business. The pandemic caused sales to wither. Women wore masks, but not a lot of lipstick those years. Why spend money to buy lipstick no one could see you wearing? Besides, no one was going anywhere to need lipstick. Sometimes, she wore lipstick underneath her face covering as a small act of defiance against all the pandemic had stolen. She ignored the stains her lipstick left on the inside of the material.

Roxana tried to diversify her product line by including eye makeup and skincare products. But lipstick was her main interest. It traced to playing dress-up when she was young. No outfit she tried on then was complete without a swipe of vivid lipstick. Second-guessing herself to emphasize other products hadn’t worked out.

A photograph Roxana treasured was taken in fall 1981. She recalled how the leaves on the maple trees in front of the house where she grew up shed their crimson and gold leaves like confetti that time of year. She wore one of her childhood getups for Halloween, complete with the ubiquitous lipstick. The eclectic ensemble paired a light blue turtleneck shirt for warmth (her mother’s sensible contribution) underneath the silky blue flowered dress one of her grandmothers brought her back from a vacation in Hawaii. She remembered how smooth the cloth felt under her fingers. In her right hand dangled one of those orange plastic jack-o-lantern pails. Her neck and wrist were heavy with the hand-me-down costume jewelry her grandmother gave her to play with. Every time she studied the picture, she noticed some detail she hadn’t before. Her gaze landed on the design of the fabric from the dress. She wondered about the flowers: what kind they were; if they were native to Hawaii; what made the designer choose these particular flowers – big orange, yellow, and white blossoms.

With the pandemic relenting, Roxana’s company was still viable, but more behind in sales than she forecast. At times like these, she sought reassurance in her lipstick plant. She always enjoyed caring for it, but when she was troubled or struggling was when it was most rewarding. Taking care of it was relaxing. It soothed the stress she felt. She may be trying to make her fortune in red lipstick, but her thumb was decidedly green. The plant was everything she was beginning to believe her cosmetics business was not: It was unpretentious and real.

As much as she liked lipstick – even the satisfying sound the container made when she snapped the top into place over a fresh tube – Roxana was starting to think she might like her lipstick plant better than actual lipstick. To her, contemplating this seemingly benign realization was sacrilege. She banished the thought. She was caught up in the fantasy of becoming a bold success in the cosmetics industry. “Forget, it,” she said aloud to herself. “Just forget it.” Uncle Knox was getting to her. That had to be all there was it.

Roxana’s uncle – her father’s brother – was forever planning to retire to Florida. He had done enough research and taken enough trips to destinations where he might retire down there that everybody wondered if he was really going to do it, or finding ways to procrastinate in the decision.

“I love my customers,” came his usual refrain when Roxana asked. For years, Uncle Knox owned a small nursery and gift shop. He was well-known in town, not only to his loyal circle of customers, but also by the local garden club, whose members came to him for advice on what to plant. It was Uncle Knox who ordered her the lipstick plant for her house.

Roxana loved the earthy smell of Uncle Knox’s greenhouse. He had a knack for selecting the right plant for the right person. “A plant is a very personal thing,” he reminded her. It was a saying of his. She guessed she understood; after all, a plant was a commitment. The responsibility of caring for it could, in some cases, last as long or longer than having a pet. She thought of the Silver Queen plant that had been in her family 20 years.

Roxana had joined him on one of the excursions to Florida. They drove late at night from North Carolina to the Amtrak station in Camden, South Carolina, to board a train going to Winter Park, Florida. Why did passenger trains have to leave at an ungodly hour? Uncle Knox wasn’t too worried about car thieves wanting the old truck he used to haul plants for the nursery. They left the truck at the station. She was skeptical about leaving a vehicle unattended at an unmanned train station in the middle of the night, but Knox was as certain the truck would be there when they returned as he was which plants would be popular sellers each season. (And right about both.)

Roxana felt like she was in Europe in Winter Park, with its arts and cultural offerings and the canal tour they’d taken. It was a reprieve from her troubles. On the way home from that trip – first on the train and, later, on the highway for the final leg of the journey – she and her uncle talked about his retirement plans. “You know, Roxie, I can’t trust my business to just anyone,” she recalled him saying with a sigh. She looked away until her gaze fell on the crumpled seed catalog in the truck’s floorboard.

As much as she enjoyed this nostalgic stroll in her mind along Winter Park’s cobblestone streets, reminiscing about accompanying Uncle Knox to try out retirement options, she needed to get back to her business. Which was cosmetics. In spite of her uncle’s kindness, she felt the familiar sense of pressure to have a major accomplishment. Pressure she couldn’t resist. If she could get her cosmetics company back on firm footing again, it would bring her closer to that achievement.

Roxana could ill afford distractions in her new advertising campaign. She wanted to use a depiction of a lipstick plant as the logo for her business, but the consultant she hired wasn’t enthusiastic about it. They compromised on a splashy stylized illustration inspired by a lipstick plant rather than a botanical drawing of a lipstick plant, as Roxana would have preferred.

The brilliant blooms and shiny foliage of her lipstick plant lifted Roxana’s mood when she arrived home from her meeting with the consultant about the ad campaign in late afternoon and paused in the kitchen. Such was her vespertine routine now. The plant’s soil was still moist from a recent watering, but not saturated with water. That was good. At the same time, she was crestfallen. “This isn’t going to work,” she said. The plant, which she often talked to, seemed to agree. The seemingly small conflict over how to spend scarce advertising dollars was emblematic of all that was wrong on the path she was on.

At times, Roxana convinced herself this plant was capable of some kind of magic. Lipstick plants typically bloomed best as summer began to turn to fall. But really, they could bloom most any time of year. When she thought about it, she realized her lipstick plant seemed to bloom at precisely the right times. The times she needed it most, as if it took no heed of whatever month she had the pages of her day planner turned to. She still kept a paper calendar, unlike most people she knew. The plant had been there guiding her, reassuring her, the whole way. The answer was right in front of her, had always been in front of her. That night, when she went to bed, she dreamed about the plant. When she got up in the morning, she knew what she needed to do. She felt like André Michaux, the French botanist and explorer, must have felt setting out on a discovery in America. She thought about him at that moment because she was fascinated with his travels in North Carolina in the 18th century.

Her thoughts drifted to Uncle Knox. She remembered when her love of plants began. She was a little girl when he took her for an afternoon walk to see the bloodroot blooming in the woods behind his house. It must have been March or April. In the sunlight, the flower’s white petals were open. “Why is it called bloodroot?” asked a then 9-year-old Roxana. “The roots and stem carry a reddish-orange sap,” Knox said. “Some Native Americans used it as a natural dye.” From then on, the plant with blood in the name – and plants in general – captivated her. There weren’t all these plant databases where you could look up information online then. She admired the way Uncle Knox just knew things.

If she was honest, bloodroot scared her a little. “If you came back at night, this flower would be closed, Roxie.” Uncle Knox tried to explain the plant’s evanescent ways. Without her uncle’s knowledge, Roxana had gathered her courage and returned alone to the woods that night years ago with her flashlight to look at the bloodroot. In the distance, an owl called softly but insistently, “Who, who, who, who, who.” She ran all the way home in the darkness, but felt exhilarated when she got there.

Uncle Knox was right. Everything has a right time. And for her, the time was now. Her heart – her blood – wasn’t in cosmetics. She wanted another way of doing business, one that was more personal. Much like that night so many years ago, she felt exhilarated now.

Uncle Knox would understand. When she finally told him, his face relaxed. A burden had been lifted, and a smile broke out across his face. He suddenly looked much younger than his years to his niece. “Roxie, honey, I knew it all the time. I certainly knew it before you did. You never did play with that chemistry set you begged everybody to buy you one Christmas. When was it? 1984? I think you were about 10. You always were one for plants.” Then he added with a laugh, “Where do you suppose you get that from?”

The two walked arm-in-arm. Uncle Knox continued to tease her about the old chemistry set with its age-appropriate experiments that wound up in the back of her childhood closet before New Year’s Eve had even come and gone that year. “Whatever happened to the glassware in that set, anyway? I could use it back at the house. Probably could use the magnifying glass, too. Could examine some plant seedlings with it.”

It was four months later. Moving day came, much to everyone’s surprise, and Uncle Knox actually did relocate to Florida, although he chose somewhere that lacked Roxana’s beloved museums and cobblestone streets. The newspaper sent somebody to the greenhouse to cover his retirement and write a community news feature about the relationships that took root with people while he was nurturing their plants. She walked close enough to overhear one of the reporter’s questions for Uncle Knox. “Will the business carry on now that you’re retiring?”

She heard the beginning of her uncle’s answer: “It wasn’t an easy decision for Roxie, er, Roxana to close her business and take over mine.” Roxana suppressed a smile when she heard him struggle to be formal in referencing her name.

After the celebration with coffee and homemade chocolate chess pies she and her uncle baked for a small collection of longtime customers and friends, Roxana lingered in the greenhouse, absorbing it all like a plant taking up nutrients. Since buying the nursery, she filled the space with an array of different types of lipstick plants to go with the other kinds of plants the store already sold. Some lipstick plants had red flowers, like hers. Some had pink, orange, or purple flowers. Others were more greenery and less flower. Her own lipstick plant was there in a comfortable location. The plant that generated it all. The plant that changed her. Had it saved her? By now, she had decided the plant was, in fact, magic – at least the figurative kind, if not in the literal sense. Caring for it had carried her through the pandemic, as well as other hard times.

A plant like this deserved a name. It wasn’t the first time the thought occurred to Roxana, but she always struggled with what to call it. Nothing seemed quite right. Suddenly, a name came to her with ease. Hortense. She knew it meant “of the garden” or “gardener.”

Roxana had lots of ideas for growing the nursery and gift shop. A business needed to adapt with the times. She was excited to refresh the business with some of the same creativity she once wanted to use in her cosmetics company. She thought the women customers might appreciate reviving the sweet sentiment of Easter corsages. Picking out a corsage to wear was an annual tradition she looked forward to when she was growing up. Uncle Knox still sold them back when she was a child. It was exciting to pry open the clear plastic corsage box. Next spring, she would have a selection in several colors paired with coordinating ribbons. She knew an orchid hybridizer who might be able to supply the flowers for some striking orchid corsages. The right corsage complemented a dress much the same way a flattering shade of lipstick completed an outfit. They would be wrist corsages. She didn’t like fumbling with corsage pins.

“I think the gift shop could use a few lipsticks next to the rack of herbal soaps,” Roxana said to Hortense. “Don’t you?” There was sufficient inventory left from the cosmetics company to stock the shelves. Though Hortense never replied, she felt firmly that the plant was listening.

Roxana maintained an affection for her uncle’s old Rolodex system of storing customers’ names and special occasions. She would consider keeping his record system intact. But she wanted to give back to the community, too. Not just focus on the business and its profits. Maybe once she had some traction with the business, she’d contact some publications about writing an occasional gardening advice column. She’d learned from the best.

As she stood making plans, the sound of footsteps crunching the pea gravel behind her interrupted Roxana’s thoughts. A customer she recognized as one of her uncle’s regulars browsed the aisles of the greenhouse. “May I help you?” she asked, the smile on her red-painted lips genuine these days. “I’m in the market for a new houseplant, something with pretty flowers,” the woman said. “I want something I really like.”

Roxana noticed the woman eyeing her lush lipstick plant she’d given pride of place in the greenhouse. It was a position of prominence befitting its role in her life. The woman overlooked the “sample” tag denoting Hortense wasn’t for sale. Roxana carefully set down the stack of terra cotta pots she was organizing. In a minute, she’d use gentle diplomacy to steer her uncle’s customer – now her customer – to the many other lipstick plants that were available for purchase. But first, she granted herself a delicate tendril of time to admire her plant. It was larger and appeared more robust than before. The gloss of its dark leaves and its generous red blooms were a testament to her care, but simultaneously an affirmation of something more.

“I understand perfectly,” Roxana said. “A plant is a very personal thing.”

the heartwood interviews: featured writer series

An Interview with Jonathan Corcoran