Author Bio: Joshua Yurche is a husband, a father of four, and he has degrees in Graphic Design and Computer Science. As a toddler, Joshua’s parents let him draw on left-over rolls of wallpaper, and his dad taught him how to draw Mickey Mouse; art and creativity have been a part of his life ever since. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Joshua used his creativity to design custom helmets for pilots and aircrew, painting here and there during his time off. Two years ago, Joshua started painting again, and he has really enjoyed getting back into it and trying out new mediums. More of his artwork can be seen on his Instagram @the_ycreative.
Author Bio: Tina Williams, a resident of Waynesboro, PA for 17 years, has done some portrait commissions, as well as other commission work, but mainly utilizes art as therapy for depression and anxiety. She is self taught with no formal art education. Tina has 3 wonderful grandsons, as well as 2 cats that love to supervise her art work. Education wise, Tina has her bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice/Forensic Psychology. She also has 2 associate’s degrees from Southwest VA Community College.
Author Bio: Joshua Yurche is a husband, a father of four, and he has degrees in Graphic Design and Computer Science. As a toddler, Joshua’s parents let him draw on left-over rolls of wallpaper, and his dad taught him how to draw Mickey Mouse; art and creativity have been a part of his life ever since. While serving in the U.S. Navy, Joshua used his creativity to design custom helmets for pilots and aircrew, painting here and there during his time off. Two years ago, Joshua started painting again, and he has really enjoyed getting back into it and trying out new mediums. More of his artwork can be seen on his Instagram @the_ycreative.
Author Bio: Coal Williams is a junior at Greencastle-Antrim High School. He is currently taking Greencastle-Antrim’s Art Portfolio course, and he is sixteen years old. Coal’s main medium is digital art, and his art typically ventures into the realm of surrealism.
Author Bio: Jack Dawson is a senior at Greencastle-Antrim High School. He loves nature, tea, and reading. Art is his favorite thing to do because it lets him express his opinions and feelings while allowing him to be creative. Jack has been doing ceramics for a few years, even prior to his high school classes with taking private lessons. In the future, Jack hopes to become a ceramicist as his career.
“Let’s get married,” Cory urged as Adair gazed up at the faded sky-blue water tower in La Rue’s town park. From below, the massive ellipsoid-shaped tank reached so high it looked smaller than the tall base and four support columns holding it up. Like a tiny insect body perched on long, spindly legs.
“Seventeen’s plenty old enough,” he added, wrapping her in his beefy
arms. “I’ll get a job at the plant and start saving for the diner like we planned.”
Adair stiffened against him, hoping he didn’t notice. “Gonna walk home
by myself,” she said carefully. “Need time to think.”
Cory was sweet. It mostly felt like love. But that didn’t make the right
direction certain, even if she was pregnant, which she didn’t really believe—probably
just late again. Cory might be sure about a baby and all, but not her.
Truth was Adair had always counted on being like her big sister
Caroline, long gone from La Rue—a town you could drive through in three minutes—as
soon as she was able to speed away. Long gone from Missouri, too. Caroline had
magic. Said Adair did, too, long as town boys like Cory Briscoe didn’t keep it
for themselves.
Dizziness washed over Adair imagining Caroline atop the tower peering clear
to Quincy, twenty-five miles east across the Mississippi on the Illinois side. She’d
only been nine at the time, Adair still in diapers. Always told it in her storybook
voice, amber eyes gleaming like she was watching a dream burst to life. “Crops
danced in the fields, Mississippi waters glistened, and Quincy was vibrating
and glowing like Paris,” she’d sigh, words wrapped in a layer of shiny satin with
special sparkles and colors that other folks couldn’t see until she spoke them out
loud.
Adair still felt magic when she and Caroline talked by phone, like she
was playing in a technicolor, surround-sound movie inside Caroline’s head. But Caroline’d
been gone so long, empty spaces had started popping up where the colors and
sparkles didn’t quite fill in. Her magic was losing its shimmer.
Adair smoothed back her auburn waves, best feature on her, and kissed Cory
before crossing Shelby Street with the burn of his puppy-dog-hurt on her back. If
there was a baby—not that there was—no chance anybody’d suspect for a while due
to her weight. But also because she was a Ewell. Name might not count for much
outside this piece of Missouri, as Caroline liked to declare, but it sure
counted here. Ewells got by on remembrances of their past prosperity, which had
dwindled considerably over the generations but still impressed folks.
Adair passed La Rue Savings & Loan, Maywood Hardware and hurried
past Shotz’s Feed & Supply before Mr. Shotz could poke his head out to say
howdy or insist Daddy come see the newest shipment.
On the dusty edge of town past the Shell station Adair followed her favorite
stretch of Highway 6 round the curve to her family’s aged farmhouse standing as
it had for eons in a mess of white oaks, flanked by a giant barn, two battered cobalt-blue
silos, and nothing but cattle, corn and quiet beyond.
Caroline couldn’t see a future here, not one thing to help fashion a life for herself. And who could argue with her sight? She’d gotten the dream life she called for. Believed, and it happened. Said Adair could create a new life, too. Course she was right—Caroline had the gift of utter certainty—but how on earth would Adair tell Cory and her folks she was going Caroline’s way before they dreamed her too much in their direction?
“Letter came from Desmond Beauty College,” Mom called from the
kitchen as the screen door banged behind Adair.
“Envelope’s on the table,” she added without glancing up from peeling potatoes
in the old farmhouse sink, same one Grammy had used, and Ma Ma before her. Caroline
liked to say no farmwoman looked decent past thirty-five. Men either. Got lumpy
like dough people. Like Mom with rolls of flesh where her waist and hips should
be. Or they grew stringy, brown and pinched from the sun and wind. At least
Adair wouldn’t be a farmer’s wife with Cory—not that she was marrying him or
anything.
“Well, what’s it say?” Mom wanted Adair to go—“beef up her options”—though
she never admitted it outright cause Daddy couldn’t stomach another daughter leaving.
Adair ripped open the envelope, belly flip-flopping, oddly gratified to
see an acceptance—even if she wasn’t going. She hadn’t breathed a word yet, but
Caroline was paying her tuition at Berkeley, out in California, where her new
boyfriend was about to start teaching.
“Got in,” Adair announced, feeling a smile pull at her lips before it evaporated in the cool of Caroline’s whisper: “You can do better.”
“Ain’t pretty enough to be a beautician,” Bennett, Jr. announced
at dinner, exploding into a giggle-fit that rattled everything on the table.
“Or skinny enough.”
“Hush your mouth,”
Daddy hissed. “Adair, what’s Cory say about this?”
She watched her pile of mashed potatoes, every eye on her, even her baby
brother Wyler’s.
“Cory want you over in Quincy all the time?”
Mom gave Daddy a roll-eyed look, but didn’t speak up. Adair heard it in his voice: he didn’t trust her to keep a boyfriend solid as Cory. Caroline believed she couldn’t do worse. Daddy feared she might not do better.
Caroline saved all her babysitting money from age twelve on, plus most
of her wages from the Dairy Queen over in Stebbensville. Day after high school
graduation she took off for Chicago, biggest city she could imagine getting to
in that old green Malibu she bought from Terry O’Brien for $200. Adair was eight,
and thought she’d never lose the ache of watching Caroline roar away.
Made it far as Des Moines, Iowa, the first night where she met Dean Gebhardt,
age 58, owner of the Cozy Stay Motel she checked into. Turned out he also owned
three other motels and a small apartment building on the city’s northeastern
edge. She never got to Chicago, but Dean gave her the start she needed to
become the Caroline she was set on becoming. When he died of a heart attack
four years after they married, she inherited enough, even with his grown kids getting
most of it, to enroll in Drake University, located near the heart of downtown, where
she began studying literature and art history.
Might seem Caroline was just aiming to appear cultured. But she’d actually
been eating up Hemingway and Jane Austen—all the classics—since she learned to
read, like she was born knowing the titles. She spent hours, too, in the school
library poring over books about the world’s great artworks. Couldn’t tear
Caroline away when she got lost in a story or absorbed in vibrating colors on
canvas. Folks finally had to conclude her appreciation was as genuine as her uncommon
good looks.
No surprise she and Lyman Chang fell for one another after she enrolled
in his seminar on 20-century world art. He not only loved Japanese watercolors
and modernist sculpture like she did, but also traveled regularly for research.
With his encouragement Caroline had started collecting animal-themed paintings,
ceramics and clothing on their trips to Europe, South America and Asia. She now
wore snake bracelets and leopard-spot scarves and planned to launch a store in
Berkeley called Wild Things once they got settled. They were also arranging an
August wedding, even though she’d barely been widowed a year.
Hard to fathom such a makeover
could happen so quick. Sure, Caroline was a Ewell. Family viewed itself as high-born,
but not show-offy. Ewells had stayed in La Rue for generations, opting for slightly
grander versions of esteemed country occupations—like farmer and town banker—over
education, city sophistication and flashier vocations.
Course that never suited Caroline. She simply didn’t fit the place—arms and legs and daydreams always spilling over the edges. Didn’t quite know where to go, but her mind seemed bent on just the right path out of town, like she carried a precision compass in her genes—genes that never showed up in any other Ewell. In fact, Caroline remade herself so completely—shining herself up so brightly and unleashing her wildest reveries so fully—Adair sometimes didn’t recognize any part of the old Caroline, inside or out.
“Let’s get married tonight,” Cory’s text read.
Adair’s mind clicked into clarity, “Meet me in the park,” she texted
back. Tonight was it. She had to tell him—sweet as he was, despite all the
plans they’d dreamed together, even with a possible baby—she could do better.
Outside, the evening was settling
in. Not a car in sight. Always felt like things were about to happen in that
hush between bright day and nighttime. They never did, but the possibility felt
realer then.
Sometimes, like tonight, Adair didn’t mind that nothing ever changed. Sign
outside town had read La Rue, Missouri, Pop. 719, long as she could remember. Wasn’t
actually too different from when Mom and Daddy were little, mostly same families
and shops, except for occasional changeovers like Harold Stice selling his minimart
to Debbie Burley and her husband in 2008.
Sometimes, like tonight, Adair didn’t mind the quiet either. May was her
favorite month, right before the hard heat of summer when everything was just beginning
to grow, sweet and young, corn barely pushed through the soil. Not a peep yet
from crickets and cicadas. By July, they’d drown out every other sound.
Sometimes, like tonight, Adair even craved the coziness of Cory’s big
arms forever. Didn’t mean to feel a pull toward him—Briscoes sat several steps
below Ewells. Just came over her sometimes without warning. Didn’t help that
Daddy talked him up—called him a throwback. To before Cory’s great, great,
great grandpa, Marshall, lost most of the family fortune in a bad land deal, and
proceeded to drink away what remained. Following generations slipped into
stagnation … and worse.
At least
Mom and Daddy could admit some families come back from ruin. Not like Uncle Glynn
and Aunt Mina over in Belleview who believed they were better than everybody cause
of their Ewell blood. In their estimation once folks slid into the trash heap, they
were all but certain to stay trash, a black mark nothing could erase like a
brand burned into flesh.
Course Caroline sounded the same, but Adair recognized something beyond
ordinary snobbery. Caroline didn’t contend to be the only special one. She regarded
all folks as special, even the lowest of the low. They just had to locate it inside
themselves.
“Most people get locked in a box of expectations before growing into their full selves,” she explained once. “It’s a choice they make, even if they don’t know it.” Meaning no matter who you were—trash or not—if you didn’t kick up a better life for yourself, you clearly believed in limitations and were doomed to become whatever you were set to be at birth. A notion Caroline couldn’t fathom or abide.
Course anyone would tell you Adair had to eventually climb the water
tower. After all, Caroline did and it changed her life, gave her answers that
made everything clear. Adair needed answers, too.
She stood alone in the park eyeing the rusty steel ladder rising up one
of the tower’s support columns. She scoured the horizon for Cory’s truck, heart
pounding loud as it ever had. No sign yet. The stores were all dark, even Mr.
Shotz’s. A ghost town. She was a ghost too, craning her head up toward the tank,
a place where life might make sense.
Adair grabbed the ladder, fire-red fingernails glinting in the remains of
daylight. She kicked off her favorite jeweled flip-flops and hoisted herself up
rung-by-rung, above small square stores, unfussy homes and aging doublewides planted
along tar-patched streets.
Two headlights made their way along Route 6 in the quiet dusk. Cory. Her
stomach lurched, but she kept climbing. Had to see the Mississippi. And Quincy.
Buildings just beginning to twinkle with lights. All that traffic and restaurants
and movie houses a twitter.
Cory’s truck slow-crawled around the park and stopped beneath the tower.
Sweat trickled down Adair’s temples and the back of her neck. She paused to rest,
praying he didn’t spy her before she got where she needed to go. High enough so
his thoughts couldn’t reach her. Caroline’s either. Or Daddy’s or Mom’s. High
enough to hear only her own free thoughts for once. High enough for what
touched Caroline to touch her.
Adair imagined Cory slouched in the driver’s seat, arms across his barrel
chest, worry fastened on his face. Did she get hit by a car or fall in a ditch?
Cory showed everything he was thinking. Just came natural to him.
Up she climbed and up, panting, straining to reach the balcony that circled
the tank. She heaved herself over the handrail and looked out, bracing for a
view of Caroline’s world. But it wasn’t there. Only the world she’d seen a
million times. Red lights blinking on the radio tower to the east. Her folks’
farm to the west. Adair could almost hear the low cluck of hens settling in for
sleep and barn cats readying to hunt the dark pastures.
Below on Knox Street, her best friend Kimber’s clapboard house stood
same as always, rear-ended by an old summer kitchen where they’d played
dress-up endlessly as kids. Next door, Miss McChristie’s family home, once the
finest place in town with its cross-gabled roof and wraparound porch, sat
nearly haunted. At street’s end, eroded gravestones in the town cemetery marked
lives of family and neighbors stretching back two centuries.
Caroline had climbed the tower and saw possibilities splayed out forever,
providing wings sturdy enough for lift-off. But Adair saw none of that. No
wings sprouted for flight. There was only the great weight of her belly and
thighs, maybe a baby, Cory below, a line of Ewells stretching backward and
forward in time. She clung to the handrail, squeezing every muscle against the
mighty gravitational pull.
Maybe she was trapped by limitations of her own making. Or caught in expectations handed down from her folks. Maybe she didn’t want to hurt them or leave their love behind. Or wasn’t gifted enough to see what made her special. Maybe she lacked imagination and guts to do better. Or couldn’t muster motivation for the tough work of reinvention. Or maybe, just maybe, the world in sight right now was just as consequential as the world that might be, more in beat with her heart. And maybe she was too. Maybe all these things were true at once.
Adair watched the familiar details of her world fade to sunset orange. A
kind of magic. But not Caroline’s kind.
Fact was she didn’t feel someone different inside, no true soul waiting
to take shape. Grief pounded against her, like waves buffeting the muddy Mississippi
riverbanks. Helplessly, she watched Caroline’s dream for her crack open like a
giant egg. Jagged pieces plummeted to earth, sending up a cloud of shame. But
also the first inklings of relief.
Maybe there was a baby and she’d marry Cory. They’d build a ranch house near
Mom and Daddy’s farm with flower beds and a big lot for dirt-biking. Maybe
she’d go to beauty school and open a home salon while Cory ran the diner. Or
just raise kids. Cory wanted four. Or she might enroll in community college and
marry somebody else. Or no one at all. There were choices. Not Caroline’s life-upside-down
kind, but choices nonetheless. Choices sitting squarely before her in the midst
of all she knew.
Slowly, Adair lowered herself down the ladder, allowing gravity to slide
her from rung to rung. She’d seen what she needed to see—wasn’t climbing higher
than she stood right now.
It was her choice, and hers alone, to become who she was set to be at birth.
Author Bio Sidney Stevens is an author with an MA in journalism from the University of Michigan. Her short stories have appeared in several literary journals, including The Wild Word, Finding the Birds Literary Journal, Viscaria Magazine, OyeDrum and The Centifictionist. Her newest story, “Night Trolley” will appear in the Summer 2021 issue of The Woven Tale Press. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Newsweek, New Works Review, Sure Woman, and Nature’s Healing Spirit, an anthology from Sowing Creek Press. In addition, she’s had hundreds of nonfiction articles published in print and online, and has also co-authored four books on natural health. Learn more at www.sidney-stevens.com.
When he spied the cell blocks burning, the warden asked,
Why are they destroying their home?
I’ll tell you why. Because you
paid us for hard labor with change peeled from beneath bus station coke machines.
Because your Christmas gift to the laundry “boy” was a carton of Lucky Strikes.
Because you were untouchable, unreachable.
You fed the Muslims pork. You gave the white boys ice in summer. Us, a cold Get lost.
The prison doctors treated broken bones with a plaster-wrapped shrug.
Why are they destroying their home?
Because it was your present.
Author Bio Paul David Adkins lives in Northern NY. He served in the US Army from 1991-2013. Recently, he earned a MA in Writing and The Oral Tradition from The Graduate Institute, Bethany, CT. He spends his days either counseling soldiers or teaching college students in a NY state correctional facility.
The coyote ran across the path in front of Shana not two feet ahead of her. She stopped to watch it disappear into the arroyo before continuing her walk down the dirt path. A feeling was awakened in her again, something she felt often on her solitary morning walks while her girlfriend, Raven, slept back at the casita. Hot coffee would be brewing when Shana returned. They had their routines, their predictability. This is what becomes evident in a long relationship.
Pulling her mask up onto her face as she noticed an elderly man approaching, walking his dog on a tight leash, Shana picked up her pace. They nodded to each other without exchanging words in shared anonymity. This is all so surreal, when can we get back to normal, Shana thought. “It’s like we’re all hungry ghosts,” she whispered out loud to herself. Most mornings she was alone out here, only occasionally passing another early riser out walking the dusty roads. She felt the crisis had much to do with that, keeping everyone indoors and out of sight. It was at once eerie and peaceful, inducing a soul-searching before the day kicked in, another day of wondering what the future held for a humanity hanging by a thread.
It had been Raven’s idea to come to this desert town after quickly leaving Mexico when the news of the pandemic hit the airwaves. After a yearlong, open-ended road trip originating from their Oregon home, the adventure startlingly halted, pivoted, redirected. The early March uncertainty extended their stay indefinitely. “We might as well just stay put for now,” Raven had said, “Ride this thing out.” The next day, Shana was on it. The more organized of the two, the keeper of logs and maps and itineraries, she secured a temporary abode, an uncertain home for a fraction of the cost it would normally cost. Their usual means of living had vanished. No one was going on a cruise or traveling to Europe or going anywhere right now. No one needed a house and garden looked after, their pets walked and fed and loved in their absence. No, people were hugging close to home for the foreseeable future, putting everything on hold.
Shana dropped down into the adjacent arroyo for the last leg of her walk before ascending the hill back to the casita. The sun was warm on her back and the blue sky held its golden orb in a cradle of expansiveness. She stopped to take in a deep breath, to smell the red earth, to feel the cool breeze across her face, inhaling a deep affinity for this place, a mysterious karmic connection as though she was always meant to be here.
Surfacing, a memory of long ago, camping near here with her then husband on their westward migration to California. She’d woken up and climbed out of the tent to the cold, cold morning on the hillside. A cottontail scurried by. She caught sight of her husband down below taking photographs with his new camera and talking with an old timer camping in his pick-up. She watched as her husband turned and waved. Shedding the Indiana dust, she remembered how she had felt squarely in the west at that moment. The rising sun alerted the dry, cold morning around her, rousing her own spirit to dawn.
Back at the casita, Raven was just putting breakfast together for the two of them, a cheese and onion omelet, toast and jam and a French press of coffee. Shana opened the door and the aroma stirred her appetite immediately. “Smells like Joe’s Diner in here,” she laughed.
Raven turned, spatula in hand, “You’re just in time! Hungry?”
Shana pulled a chair out at the dining table and removed the mask from around her neck, unlaced her hiking boots and set her cowboy hat down on the table as Raven dropped a steaming mug of coffee in front of her and ran back to the kitchen to plate up the breakfast. “How was your walk?” she asked from her post at the stove.
“Great. As always. I don’t know why you don’t get up and join me once in a while?” Shana said between hot sips.
“Oh, I know. It’s just not my rhythm.”
Appearing at the table with warm plates, a dish towel slung over her shoulder, Raven beamed brightly over her accomplishment and offering. “Besides, look what you get to come back to!”
Raven pulled her chair out and sat down, heartily digging into her omelet, her black hair pulled up into a towering topknot over deep brown eyes and thick eyebrows, aquiline nose and full lips. She was of Belgian by way of Greek descent, a natural beauty carried over millennia and captured in paint by old European masters; classic, timeless and exotic. “So, what do you think about what we talked about last night,” she said looking down at her plate, loading up her fork with egg.
“I’m still pondering it, Raven. I’m not sure it’s time to move on yet.”
Raven looked up and set her fork down. “Well, we could get stuck here for a while if we don’t make a move soon. Who knows what’s gonna happen next in this crazy world!”
Meeting Raven’s gaze directly, Shana explained she was pretty happy to be “stuck” here and did not feel the impetus to do or decide anything different. “If we left now, it would feel prematurely over. Unfulfilled. I don’t know. It would be like unrequited love. I can’t explain it, it’s a yearning. I’ve only felt it in a few places on this earth. When we were here before, I was sad to leave. I even told you we didn’t spend enough time here as we were driving away, remember?” Shana asked. “And now that we’re back, it’s like it’s home. Some part of my life has already mapped this out. I can’t leave. Not yet.”
“That’s an awful lot of “I” and not much “we”, Shana,” she said but Shana just looked away and cast her gaze out the window onto Western Junipers sharing residence in the foreground of a sweeping sky over not so distant mountains. Majestic clouds hung loosely across a horizon that filled her with wonder and expansive hope.
“How is this stunning beauty lost on Raven?” she wondered.
“Well, whatever. I’m not a desert person. It’s too dry. The earth smells weird to me here, potent, cloying even. Smoky. My eyes hurt and my sinuses are so dry, my skin feels like paper… I prefer a wetter climate. How about we head to Maine, Shana? Like I suggested last night…see what we can find there?” Raven pressed. Shana sat still, unmoved by Raven’s plea, unable to find words to express things with more clarity than she already had. Standing, she gathered up their empty breakfast plates, walked into the kitchen and began to wash the dishes in silence.
“Raven is a messy cook, this will keep me occupied and at a safe distance from her for a minute,” she thought. But Raven was suddenly there, leaning on the kitchen island counter directly across from Shana, not letting it drop so easily.
“C’mon, Shay, don’t leave me out of this. We’re in this together, ya know. Let’s decide on something that works for both of us. Would Maine be so bad?” Raven said.
Shana felt things were undefinable. She tried persuading Raven to see the desert town the way she did. How it spoke to her with its unique architecture – a style Raven sarcastically called “Flintstone Chic.” She tried to explain the attention to a specific visual aesthetic and the town’s support of art and artists. But Raven kept on with her complaints about the arid climate, the heat. And then when the temperature dropped dramatically on an early September afternoon dumping snow out of nowhere after weeks of 90-degree temperatures, she grumbled that this place didn’t even know what season it wanted to be. She couldn’t win an argument against that kind of thinking. To Shana, the unexpected snow refreshed everything, adding to the otherworldly quality of this place, Shana’s place in the world.
*************
The two women met at an art opening seventeen years earlier in Portland, Oregon, introduced by a mutual friend. They hit it off immediately and made a date for lunch at a cafe on Hawthorne later in the week. Shana learned that Raven was a French teacher and assistant Lacrosse coach at an all-girls private high school in Lake Oswego, just outside the city. She loved to hike and camp and be outdoors as much as possible. She was a bon vivant and liked being around people.
Shana was her opposite in some ways, preferring a more quiet existence. She found solitude in her Everett Station loft, sculpting for hours alone, lost in creative reverie. She went for walks through the dense downtown neighborhoods leading to the river every morning to consider the new day ahead. In an unhappy marriage that happened too fast, Shana had explained to Raven over that first lunch how she left California and her ex-husband after three years and disappeared into the Oregon forest to figure out her life. Emerging from her living mediation, she moved into the city to fulfill her identity and life as an artist.
Though they were different personalities, they found common ground and before too long they fell into bed together and into each other’s lives so deeply there was no turning back.
*************
Shana wandered through the used bookstore in Tucson, just days before they would cross the border into Mexico last winter. Raven was next door getting her hair cut into a short and curly bob, often in need of changing things up. Loading her basket with a couple of new novels and a few classics she knew they would both enjoy, Shana found herself in the section marked Religion and Philosophy. She set her cart down and ran her finger across the titles, some familiar and others not. She had taken a class in college on World Religions and remembered that the Hinduism and Buddhism segments had resonated with her, though she did not retain much of it in her life on purpose.
Her finger stopped on a slim book with a red cover and a mysterious title that felt oddly familiar. Opening the book to a random page somewhere in the middle, she read the title Samskaras, which marked the top of the page. She studied it silently, oblivious to the activity and bustle all around her in the shop. Reading a few pages, she learned that samskaras were the karmic grooves etched into us from our words, deeds and actions in life. Suddenly it sparked a memory from her college course, remembering how she had thought the word sounded like “some scars” which was what they were, in a way.
Her teacher had described it like this: Imagine an old vinyl record. There are grooves where a song begins and where a song ends. Over time, the record gets scratched and some of those scratches are small and some are deep; we drop the record, there are dents and dings and dust, it may get cracked in places. All of those blemishes interrupt the melody, disrupting the continuity of the song. We, too, have grooves – imprints we are born with along with new ones that form across our lives from all our beginnings and endings, the cracks and dents are the events that shape us and affect the sound of our music.
The professor went on to explain that samskaras were the karmic data etched deeply into our souls, but, unlike the vinyl record, we could buff out the grooves and scratches with better actions. Nothing was eternally engraved unless we allowed it to be. It was coming back to Shana slowly, then. She recalled how the teaching had encouraged her to leave her husband, how to restore her internal song back to its proper cadence.
Raven sauntered up to Shana with a new haircut. Shana’s hand dropped the book into the basket nonchalantly. “I found us some great books to read on the beach in Mexico,” Shana said of the other works beneath the red cover. “Hey, your hair looks great! Ready to get out of here?”
*************
Over an early dinner on the patio a few days after their breakfast conversation about moving on, Raven broached the topic again with Shana.
“From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, huh? I love the way that sounds, finding ourselves in the same named city but on opposite sides of the country in whole new surroundings. Doesn’t that sound fantastic, Shay!” she urged with a giggle, taking a sip of red wine.
“Ya know, Raven. You are the most persistent person I know. You just won’t stop until you get your way. I hear what you’re saying you need, but are you hearing me?” Shana asked, looking deeply into Raven’s dark eyes.
The relationship had been strained for a while now, and they were both just making the best of a slowly deteriorating situation, further stymied by the global crisis. Their physical relationship was nothing like it used to be. But bigger issues loomed. Blames had been inaccurately assigned over recent years. Arguments erupted with more frequency, tensions and differences revealed more openly than before. While they shared in each other’s small successes, they had become each other’s dumping ground for failures and disappointments, too. Love had become a desert. A desolate silence engulfed them until Shana broke it open.
“I think it’s obvious we want different things right now, Raven.”
Raven looked down at her empty plate. “What are you getting at, Shay?”
“Look, we’ve been struggling for a while. All couples do after this much time and maybe we need to take a break. Recalibrate. Consider our options, that’s all.”
“Oh, like when you left your husband in California and disappeared into the woods, ya mean, like that? Those kinds of options?” Raven asked with dry contempt.
Shana knew she hadn’t handled things well with her husband and if she could undo the hurt, she would. But that was her past, a groove left in place, etched forever on her soul.
“Raven. Go to Maine. I’m staying here. I’m not saying it’s forever, I’m not kicking you out of my life. But how many times are we going to have this conversation, it’s a broken record! A record that is full of scratches so deep we can’t even hear the music anymore. Just static. Maybe after a while, we buy a new recording…one that’s sweet and beautiful. Like we once were. You see what I mean?”
*************
Raven left two days later, driving away at dusk down the dirt road leading from their casita out of town. The sun was dropping across the horizon and bringing a cool ending to the day. After spending an hour or two separating their things and cleaning out the van of any remaining articles of Shana’s, they had shared a mostly silent meal, followed by tears and a long embrace at the doorway. Raven didn’t turn back to take Shana in one last time but simply drove away in slow movement away from her. Shana stood on the front porch and watched the sun make its final dip, went inside and drew a bath to wash the residue off her skin.
*************
Shana opened the French doors of the bedroom to let in the new morning air, a single red book sitting solitary on her nightstand. Stepping out into the patio, she turned her face into the warmth. Across the road, a raven fluttered its wings in a nearby tree, taking flight to other realms unknown. Somewhere in the desert, a coyote wandered solo down a dry arroyo. A cactus flower opened its blossom to the sun.
Author Bio Mary Corbin is a writer and artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her approach is one from the heart, seeking connection to the global community. Whether in words on a page or paint on a canvas, she aims for strong narrative and relatable characters and experiences. Mary seeks common ground by capturing a simple moment, thought, or gesture of the ordinary, while suggesting the mysterious layers that lie beneath the surface. This contemplation is her constant source material.
Back in high school days, although this rookie liked Classical Music Appreciation, I pushed Ms. Moore to the limit baiting her during senior year to flunk me if missed class — which she didn’t.
Today my grandson just turns off Zoom’s camera.
Author’s Bio Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com
hard against the mattress. like flags at airports,
tight in high winds. piling
old sheets in the corner
and putting down new ones –
our tangled scent and memory
given way to smells of chemicals.
I don’t know if I like this;
replacing the comfort of odours
with something that comes from a bottle,
which smells the way that someone
has decided flowers smell,
but I know you do. and really,
who wants dirty bedlinens?
I’ll like this just as much
when we’re both asleep tonight.
I tuck it at the corners
and strip the comforter
for new covers.
you are in the kitchen
sorting the rest of the washing. it’s winter,
walls batting cold
like a horsetail with flies.
I feel that I could take your laundry
and pile it with my fingers.
push it down
like leaves in compost.
fall in it backwards
and sink.
Author Bio: DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)
