Category Archives: Essay/Memoir

Kali Gandaki by Connie Clark

Photo of canyon under blue sky
 

I have a fear of heights. It is a fear of depths, too. Stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and look down? No, no matter how beautiful it may be. Sit with my legs dangling off a mountain peak? Never. I can’t even look at pictures of people doing these things without flinching. For years, I refused to look over the precipice’s edge into the world of the dying. I ran from them. I turned off the phone, been out of town. I left the room. I have said, “I’m praying for you,” … Continue reading Kali Gandaki by Connie Clark

Missive From the Snow Globe by Charlotte Matthews

Photo of snow globe
 

Not sure how we got here. But here is where we are. My next-door neighbor, Sarah, and her little sister Pearl, and me. We were eating cereal at their red kitchen table, the light of January moving across the wall where their parakeets, Peet and Repeat, lunge sporadically around their cage. We were at the kitchen table one moment. And the next we were inside this snow globe. On the floor is a circular rug, red and pink with miniature roses, probably wool, like the rugs at the store where Mom works. To the left … Continue reading Missive From the Snow Globe by Charlotte Matthews

Return to Civilization by Elizabeth L. Delaney

Photo of green mask over and over
 

Two 584-million-mile trips around the sun—the only traveling any of us could do. Two sets of birthdays and anniversaries and seasonal accoutrement. Innumerable sleepless nights. All spent in pandemic hibernation. In terror. On the brink of insanity. It’s fitting that they’d bring me back. Just like they always have. When the clarion call came, it rattled like a cruel tease. After one cancelled tour and another doomed returning-to-normal show amid countless are-we-there-yet moments, the prospect of real-life anything seemed out of reach. I wasn’t ready anyway, still subsumed by a pandemic-induced Stockholm syndrome. But as … Continue reading Return to Civilization by Elizabeth L. Delaney

In the After by Sarah E. Laughter

Photo of empty camping chairs at lake at dusk
 

My favorite photograph shows my children trudging through a cold, whispering creek hand in hand.  The afternoon light filters through the canopy, refracting across the lens in an angelic glow. The girls are still little.  Our youngest wears a heavy diaper that skims the surface of the shallow water.  The energy is electric. Magical. The waterway bubbles and winds along the border of our property, cutting a five-foot canyon into the red-clay earth. Along the bottom, the creek ripples over slick stones and fallen trees, which hide red salamanders and tiny fish. A small stretch … Continue reading In the After by Sarah E. Laughter

Poverty Sucks by Scott Hurd

Photo of Liverpool Dock
 

Framed on my mother’s real estate office desk was a small poster from the ‘80s. Twenty years later, it was still there in a space where a family portrait might have been. It pictured a well-coiffed woman with a sarcastically smug aristocratic sneer, a champagne glass in one hand and a riding strop in the other, dressed as to the manor born: tweed jacket, cravat, English riding pants and knee-length boots, one resting on the bumper of a Rolls Royce, parked in front of some grand estate. The image illustrated the caption: Poverty Sucks. This … Continue reading Poverty Sucks by Scott Hurd

A Case of Spiriting by T. J. Masluk

Photo of filled dishwasher
 

“To Live Until . . . ” Many know the rest of the title: “We Say Good-Bye.” It is from Kübler-Ross’s well-known book about terminal patients, how some manage to live fully, how we all can learn to face death heroically and emerge like butterflies from cocoons. The day Mom was diagnosed with congestive heart failure marked a turning point: she could resign herself to the inevitable and “go gentle into that good night,” or embrace the abyss, and live purposely ’till the end. Hungarians are famously known for their melancholia, and for decades Hungary … Continue reading A Case of Spiriting by T. J. Masluk

Dear Portland: a Love Letter to My Childhood Sweetheart by Melissent Zuwalt

Photo of Japanese lanterns
 

We first met holding hands at the outdoor Saturday market, vendors selling tie-dyed tee shirts and us eating foods that seemed exotic to me, like yakisoba noodles and teriyaki chicken. You revealed an existence better suited for me—one that lay beyond the endless berry fields and tractors and crippling solitude of my rural childhood. Although our time together was limited, you were the first city I ever knew, dear Portland. And my love for you was instant and deep and true. Remember how, when I was in high school, I tried to visit you as … Continue reading Dear Portland: a Love Letter to My Childhood Sweetheart by Melissent Zuwalt

Culture Shock by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner

Photo of kayaker on water
 

Fifteen years ago, I knew that moving to the Midwest would be a kind of culture shock. I knew it because I googled “Regional Food of Michigan” and the first thing that came up was “cereal.” But I didn’t know then what I know now, that Midwestern Nice was going to be the real shock. I always felt shy growing up on Long Island. Part of that shyness was that I was an outsider from the start. We started our lives as a family in Palo Alto, Calif., where I was born at Stanford University … Continue reading Culture Shock by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner

I Don’t Miss You When You’re Not With Me by Bridget Verhaaren

Photo of two wedding rings
 

I reach for a glass jar of sweet gherkins and notice the same unfamiliar woman is following me down another aisle in the grocery store. I wonder if it is a coincidence. My gut tells me otherwise. The wavy-haired woman is looking down at her phone. Moving toward her, I pretend to search for stone ground mustard. I am now close enough to see she is on social media. Startled I am so near, she stammers, “You, you, you look familiar.” I look at her and know I have never seen her before, unless I … Continue reading I Don’t Miss You When You’re Not With Me by Bridget Verhaaren

For Ali by Elizabeth Bird

Photo of bouquets of funeral flowers
 

My flight is booked. I’ll be with you at the hospital, and I’ll stay for your recovery when your kids go back to work. It’s been just a few days—plenty of time for the doctors to figure things out. We’ve been talking on screens for too long; I can’t wait to hug you! And then our brother is on the phone, a strange urgency in his voice. “She wants to see you; she needs to see you.” “You told her I’m coming? I’ll be there in forty-eight hours. I’m on my way!” “She wants to … Continue reading For Ali by Elizabeth Bird