Category: Nonfiction (Page 5 of 11)

a person ironing cloth — Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Pexels.com

How to Iron

13 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by N.G. Haiduck

My father did the ironing in our house. My mother was sick, not bed-ridden, but too sick to stand at a board pushing a hot iron over my father’s white cotton shirts. So in the evening, after supper (my father cooked) and the dishes (my sister and I washed), in the living room between the sofa and the armchair where my mother sat stone-faced in front of the TV, my father set up the ironing board.

He tested the steam iron by pressing it over a dishtowel. When the iron sputtered, he ironed: his white shirts, my pleated skirts, my sister’s ruffled blouses, my mother’s house dresses. He ironed the sheets. He taught me how to iron his handkerchiefs. First one side, fold once, iron, fold again, the monogram on the outside, iron, fold, iron. I progressed to pillow cases. Same method: iron, fold, iron, fold, iron.

To this day, my aunts disparage my mother (she died and, a few years later, he died) because “she made your father do the ironing.”

My father had a vegetable garden on a patch of land he rented from Miss Bliss, who owned the weather-beaten farmhouse next door. All summer long, I helped weed my father’s garden. On weekends, he sold tomatoes at a roadside stand on Route 51 in front of that old gray house, until Miss Bliss sold her property to a developer.

My father’s partner selling vegetables at the roadside stand was Mike, who had a cornfield down the road. I had to go to Mike’s house one Saturday to pick up an envelope. My mother, sitting in her armchair, called after me, “Don’t tell her I don’t iron!” Mike’s wife, Mary, ironed her husband’s white shirts perfectly.

A smiling plump woman, Mary opened the door, and I came into a living room filled with waves of freshly ironed white shirts, a few pale blue shirts mixed in, on hangers hooked over doorknobs, on rods attached to closet doors, and from the wing of a floor lamp standing next to a massive ironing board in the center of the room. It smelled like spring.

I had to step over a hassock and duck under the shirts to get to the kitchen, where Mary gave me an envelope (money from the business, I suppose). Dutifully, I brought the envelope home, but my mother said she never wanted me to go back there again. “I don’t want her to find out I don’t iron.” Of course I would never tell.

Just as my grandmother never told me. Only after my mother died, she said, shaking her head, “Too bad you didn’t know your mother before she started taking those pills.” I didn’t know. Nobody told me.

My husband says his shirts come out brighter and crisper from the dry cleaners. Still, in the evening, after dinner dishes are put away, I set up the board in the living room. I turn on the TV. When the iron is hot and sputtering, I iron. My husband’s shirts: back of the collar first, then the cuffs, run the iron up the sleeves, flip to the back of the shirt and the shoulder; then the front around the buttons, the shirt pocket, and last, the front of the collar. Same procedure for my blouses. Blue jeans: pockets ironed inside out, waist band and fly pressed twice, then the seams and a sharp crease. Pillowcases (but not sheets): lay flat on the board, iron, fold, iron, fold, iron.

N.G. Haiduck taught English at The City College of New York and now writes from Burlington, Vermont. Publications (2023) include: Aeolian Harp Anthology, Cold Lake Anthology, Kakalak, and BigCityLit. Haiduck’s first book, “Cabbie,” about a young woman driving a cab in New York City, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

For Every October

12 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Stacie Eirich

The leaves have begun to turn from green to yellow to brown, falling from branches to land in the lawn beside me. The grass is littered with them, the hard cusps of acorns rolling beneath my toes. A cooler wind wisps against my cheek and darkness falls earlier each evening; summer heaves her last breaths as October’s notes become the steady hymn of autumn.

Before last October, autumn would have been my answer to the question: What is your favorite season? Like so many artists, my muse is found in a cool darkness stitched with stars, in nights fragrant with the scent of smoke and glow of firelight, in walks through forests thick with trees that shiver in the breeze, their leaves shimmering green-gold-rust in sunlight as they fall to hard ground.

Before last October, I would have told you that October was a beautiful month, one where nature glistens wide with colors, the one in which my son was born. The month of pumpkin spice, sweater weather, homemade chili and Halloween. I would have told you that October felt lovely and comfortable, a relief from the stifling heat of summer.

I’m not sure how I feel about October now. How I feel about that fateful day: October 12th — Diagnosis Day. The day an MRI revealed that my fourteen-year-old daughter had a brain tumor.

The day was blissful with sunlight and a soft breeze that welcomed in the beginning of my favorite season. In the early afternoon, while she and her brother were still at school and before we knew anything of scans or tumors — I took a journal out on a nature walk. I gathered leaves and wrote verses, pressed them in. That journal sits in my bedside drawer, untouched now since then, almost a year later.

Like autumn, I’m nervous to revisit it, to open it and find whatever beauty is left there. Beauty that is evidence to how October gives life and changes it, evidence to how different the world felt last October from this October.

But as we approach October 12th this year, I find myself drawn to the journal, drawn to touch and examine the leaves I pressed into its pages, to read the words I wrote before I knew anything of brain tumors or intracranial pressure or hydrocephalus or medulloblastoma, of MRIs or lumbar punctures or biopsies or surgical resections. Of shunts or ports or proton beams or absolute neutrophil counts. Before I knew what it means to have a child with cancer.

Yesterday we decorated the house with balloons, celebrated my daughter’s NED status: No Evidence of Disease. She has completed her treatments, completed a year’s worth of life-altering experiences that have both saved her and changed her. She has shown us her resilience and breaking point, her incredible strength and heartbreaking fragility.

I watch the balloons bounce lightly in the breeze on our mailbox, their colors and confetti bright in October’s sunshine. I walk through the lawn, unraveling ribbons to watch them travel higher into a clear blue sky, listen to the chirps of blue jays in the branches.

I hear the sounds of my daughter waking; she comes to sit beside me as I write. We watch the squirrels chitter and chase each other through the lawn, gather acorns and bury them. I tell her about the journal, and she fetches it from my drawer, anxious to see the memories left in its pages.

We touch the dried, spiny pressed leaves and read my words together, October’s light vivid with sun in a clear sky. I feel something loosen, something lighten inside me, and a warmth despite the cool breeze that brushes my skin.

Before last October, I didn’t know light would still be possible through darkness, that survival meant looking for it in each hour. I didn’t know joy would find its way to us through grief.

I look up into the sunlight of this October and see the beauty that remains, glimpse how nature and life are colorful and changing and resilient. I accept that this October will never be the same as the last, that life and experiences have ways of changing you that cannot be undone. And I breathe.

My daughter hands me a clutch of pink, purple and blue ribbons and we walk across the grass together. Slowly, we release strands of ribbon upward, watching the balloons confetti swirl into a cloud of rainbow in blue. We twine our fingers together and look up, up — up.

We breathe in the scents and sounds of October and tell each other we are glad to be home. We talk about her brother’s birthday; how much taller and bigger and stubborner and smarter he is now that he’s almost fourteen.

I think of how amazing it is to be awake together to watch the wings that fly between the trees, the squirrels rush through the grass, the green-gold leaves shimmer in autumn’s light. Present, familiar, yet ever-changing, and wondrous — this month with a heart for so many things, this October and the way it unravels me, the way it breaks me apart and stitches me back together again.

Stacie Eirich is a mother of two, poet & singer from Louisiana. Her poems have recently appeared in The Healing Muse, Inlandia Journal and Susurrus Magazine. During 2023, she lived in Tennessee, where she wrote while caring for her daughter through cancer treatments at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. www.stacieeirich.com

Letter to an Estranged Father

3 October 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Kasumova

Recently, on my way to visit a friend, I drove by Kitty’s Restaurant and Lounge in North Reading. Do you remember the time we went there? It was a Saturday, late summer, either in ‘94 or ‘95, and we’d come from Lawrence where we picked up my school uniform. We stopped by Kitty’s for lunch on the way home. It was a throwback spot: dim lighting, torn booths, cigarette smoke. The bathroom was all red tile and red vinyl and red toilets, like something from a horror movie.

We waited a long time for the food to arrive, and when it did, I remember giggling as I looked down at the brownish steak tip gristle sitting in oil placed in front of me. I don’t remember what you or Mom had, but neither was good. It was one of the worst meals we’d ever had. Comically bad.

I think we left without paying.

Despite the badness of the restaurant this memory is a happy one. We laughed and smiled in unity over the awfulness that was Kitty’s.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the tragic outcome of our family, my mind filling with “whys” and “what ifs” and “if onlys.” Lately though, I’ve begun widening the lens, allowing a little more light in.

Turns out we had our good moments, like bonding over bad meals.

Angela Kasumova is an emerging writer of creative nonfiction with over a decade of experience working in the fields of mental health and education. She lives with her husband and sons near Boston, Massachusetts. Read her first published piece on The Bluebird Word from June 2023: For Sale: Kawai Upright Piano, $1,250.

Ruth and Oscar

12 August 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Townsend

Ruth and Oscar have been married forty years, and they have drawn stares for every one.

Oscar, crafted exclusively of knees and elbows, is the word “jaunty” sprung to life. Eighty-six and five-foot-two, he commands eyes bluer than the Earth from space.

Oscar will neither retire from paid work nor stomach being told that he is in any way impressive. What he will do is elbow you, an instant co-conspirator in this majestic business of being awake, and call you “kid” until you wish it was your given name. His polo shirts are sky and indigo, bright enough to spot him across a century.

Statuesque at seventy-eight, Ruth is a cloud of concern, claiming herself unworthy of her white halo. Her mouth is mournful, and if she didn’t love you, she would distrust you when you insist she is one of the kindest people you know.

But Ruth does love you, almost enough to believe the unfathomable things you believe about her. Proficient in ganache and genealogy, she makes cold rooms feel like dens. She feeds strays, only a few of them feline, and lies awake worrying who might be alone this Thanksgiving. Ruth cried when she learned that introversion is an honest, honorable trait, not a shortcoming.

Oscar and Ruth have toilet paper emblazoned with the face of a political figure.

When Oscar sees me, he hugs me so tight I nearly need to have his elbows surgically removed. Ours was one of those instant bonds that makes you wonder if your families touch fingertips above the treeline. Far beyond DNA, Oscar is family now, equal parts scampish brother and Father Abraham.

Ruth learns through cautious eyes but raced through the pages of my affection like one of her Revolutionary War novels. For ten years she has been perplexed by my admiration, telling me I’m kinder than cats and twice as daft. But when Ruth sees Ruth in my mirror, the truth makes her taller, and she shines like God’s angel in her sturdy denim dress.

On my birthday, Ruth carefully lays out cards on her desktop computer, photos of their cats with wry bylines like, “Sage was going to wish you a happy birthday, but she had to eat her third breakfast instead.” I save every one.

Ruth and Oscar are the rare friends with whom I’ve discussed our rare friendship. None of us has any explanation for why we loved each other so quickly and entirely, only that we are very, very fortunate.

I had to downplay the distress of my divorce to Oscar, who shuddered with tears anyway, lip quivering. “This, to the best person we know!”

But Ruth and Oscar found each other after divorces of their own, pasts they don’t discuss, histories that had to happen for us to have Ruth and Oscar.

Oscar and Ruth give me hope.

Oscar and Ruth had better both reach one hundred years.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place and has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work has appeared or will be published in upcoming issues of The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Fathom Magazine, and Young Ravens Literary Review, among others. Angie loves life dearly.

Roller Coaster

3 July 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Mary Zelinka

It’s 1973 and I’m working at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Denver. I’m twenty-five and at the tail end of my marriage. Only one of our two cars runs at a time and my husband uses it. After we drop our four-year-old Bobby off at the sitter’s at 6:00 AM, he drives me to work. I’m always an hour early. I spend this hour in the bank cafeteria’s kitchen tagging after Velma and her twelve-inch beehive hairdo as she fixes me breakfast and spouts raunchy jokes. This is the best part of my day.

After work, I take the bus home. This is the worst part of my day. Crowds of people jostle for position – if you don’t make the first bus, which I rarely do – you have to wait twenty minutes for the next. Then I’m late picking Bobby up and we have to walk the mile home in the dark.

On this particular summer afternoon as I’m being shouldered about on the sidewalk, I hear a loud voice, thick with accent, “Vitch bus the Elitch Garden? I must to ride famous roller coaster!”

It’s sweltering hot, in the way heat beats down on a city. My thin cotton dress feels damp as my opponents for the first bus press close. But the louder the Voice grows, the wider the space between me and the crowd becomes. Finally, the Voice is right next to me, and, since I haven’t learned (will never learn, actually) not to make eye contact with anyone in the city, he is looking at me right in the eyes.

“Vitch bus the Elitch? I must to ride roller coaster!” I look around at the other bus riders, but everyone keeps their gaze firmly fixed at some point far away. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders at the man.

Deep lines cut through his big square face, his smile wide. He laughs, a great booming laugh. And then, to my increasing anxiety, unbuttons the left cuff of his heavy long-sleeved shirt (how could he wear such a shirt on this hot day?) and begins rolling up his sleeve in an alarming manner.

He flexes his bicep at me and laughs. “Russian! Ninety years! Strong!” Not sure of the proper behavior in this situation, I nod at him and smile.

“I like you!” He’s no taller than I am, but he wraps his arms around me and lifts me off the sidewalk. He tosses me upwards a bit, the way you would a child, and then sets me down. My legs wobble.

“I find the Elitch Garden! Ride roller coaster!” And he marches on down the street just as the first bus sighs to a stop. The crowd shoves past and I’m vaguely aware of the bus leaving without me as I stare after him.

My husband and I divorce not long afterwards. He leaves me the car with the payments and my bus riding days come to an end.

Six months later, I am downtown at night on a date. It’s late and has been snowing. The sidewalks are slick and Jack has his arm around me as we leave the restaurant.

Suddenly a short square man marches up to us, stops, and peers into my face. “You!” He laughs his booming laugh. “I find Elitch! Roller coaster fast!” I laugh with him, but I notice Jack takes his arm from around me and moves a half step away.

“Still strong!” The Russian flexes his bicep at me, thankfully leaving all his clothing securely buttoned. He wraps his arms around me and tosses me upwards. This time my legs do not wobble when he sets me down. He laughs and then marches off into the night.

I look up at Jack, thrilled that he witnessed this event. He had accused me of making the Russian up.

His face has gone dark.

Later I will realize Jack’s reaction accurately foretold my next four years. And by the time I escape him, this dark look has become normal.

But in that moment, watching the Russian materialize through the snow, giant flakes clinging to his hair, his wide smile upon recognizing me, I am so taken with the magicalness of his existence I am filled with joy.

Mary Zelinka lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and has worked at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence for almost 35 years. Her writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Brevity, and Multiplicity.

Photo of Father's Coat (courtesy of author)

My Father’s Coat, in Three Acts

1 July 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Cheryl Sadowski

How old am I—four? five? awaiting my father’s arrival. I stare out the picture window of our living room watching snow fall like feathers when his car rolls into the driveway. The door swings open, and my mother cheerfully calls out. I see my father’s face and run headlong into his herringbone coat: it smells of spice, wool, and winter. I huddle against his legs and look down at his shiny black shoes. Whether or not my father loves his herringbone coat, or even likes it, I cannot say. Only that it is his.

So called for its resemblance to fish bones, herringbone is an interlocking pattern of zig-zag lines known for strength and durability. Ancient Egyptians borrowed the design from nature for their jewelry. Romans laid roads in a herringbone pattern. Herringbone tweed began as a working man’s cloth, serious and sturdy, to guard against the damp climates of Scotland and England.

My father’s coat is classic herringbone, tightly woven, with woolen Vs in black and gray, and an expertly tailored, glossy black lining. A sewn-in patch indicates provenance: Diamond’s Store for Men, a sartorial staple for professional attire during the 1960s and 70s.

For years the coat hangs in our cramped foyer closet amid a cadre of more flamboyant jackets: my mother’s Christmas cloak, my younger brother’s recreational wear, my high school letter jacket with a giant green ‘M’ emblazoned on the breast. I catch a glimpse of herringbone pattern—steadfast, stoic—whenever I grab my own coat and run out the door.

II.

My father’s coat accompanies me to college in Wisconsin, though I have no memory of asking him if I could take it. I wear it walking to classes, laughing and kicking through snow drifts with friends on the way to Ivan’s Pizza. Wisconsin winters are stark and cold. The herringbone acts like armor, blunting the sharp winds.

The coat is too big for me, but when I pair it with black biker boots and patterned tights, I love the way it makes me feel: artistic, complicated, like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. It is a warm, woolen talisman, cloaking me after nasty rows with my boyfriend. When I wear the herringbone with a pink velvet scarf, I am La Boheme! conjugating French verbs while I walk … je travaille, tu travailles, il travaille.

I recall a scene from Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary: Emma Bovary, fresh from the winter air, lifts her hem to warm her foot by the fire, the allure and power of her well-revealed ankle. The hem of my father’s coat brushes over the tops of my boots when I walk. My calves are strong and young beneath its shelter. I saunter, sing-songing, insouciant, and free.

III.

It’s February. Seated on a cold, steel outdoor bench, I wait for the train. Beneath the elevated platform, office workers escape the manacles of cubicles and conference rooms. I, too, am tethered to the office, and to Chicago rents and utility bills. My father’s coat, now vintage, is admired by colleagues.

Snow sifts down through the mesh muslin sky. I raise the crook of my elbow to my nose and breathe in deeply. The coat’s fibers are still coarse and sturdy, the herringbone pattern so close, familiar. But the memory is thin, a wavering white veil between myself and my childhood.

I can’t see my father’s face to know if he is happy or tired or anxious. I long for the smell of spice, wool, and winter. My black biker boots are long gone, and I have no idea what became of my pink velvet scarf.

I reach back to the classroom: Nous travaillons. We are working.

The train approaches, a rushing ribbon of herringbone on iron wheels, unspooling, unstoppable. I stare at the long track ahead. It bends around the corner and disappears into the distance. Briefcase in hand, I rise and brush the snow from my lap. For the first time I notice that my father’s coat is heavy.

Cheryl Sadowski writes essays and short fiction that explore the connections of everyday life with landscape, literature, art, and the natural world. Her writing appears in About Place Journal, Vita Poetica, Orchards Poetry Journal, EcoTheo Review, Broadkill Review, After the Art, and Bay to Ocean Journal. She lives in Northern Virginia.

Defining Silence

29 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Candy Hamilton

As I take notes on Latin influence in Indo-European languages, playground noises easily distract me. On the school playground across the street, a dozen or so kids are shifting in some ad hoc football game, full of passes and soprano yells. Long after the bell shrills over the thuds on the playground. Mostly the voices blur, but now and then from my living room rocking chair, I distinctly hear, “No it didn’t go out. No we don’t need ’em.” I have much more to do than watch youngsters celebrating a warm fall day, but nothing better to do than watch surrogates for my grandchildren three hundred miles away, so I lean forward in my chair to peer through the storm door window.

Two kids weave their bicycles through the ad-lib formations without bothering the football players. I’m watching two ballet performances winding through each other. One boy, (They are all boys, I think) taller than the others, already has that loose-limbed walk that comes with adolescence and for some never disappears. Slack arms pumping faster, more flowing than his legs, he moves as if his muscles and bones float in water. He knows nothing about gravity, and his shoulders have a life of their own.

Finally a smaller boy actually catches the ball and runs triumphant toward the fence—straight toward me. If he knew I was here, now standing behind the door, perhaps he’d leap the fence, the road, score his touchdown through my front door. Green Bay style. Perhaps he’d prefer to leap the tree where the birds and squirrels make up the cheering section, or perhaps they sound more like coaches cussing and raising hell over so many dropped passes.

The kids don’t have a running game except for chasing the ball bouncing in its oval wobbles around the paved playground. A break in the action, and finally I notice the empty parking lot—no school today. These boys have scrimmaged through a perfect unending recess while I dreaded the arrival of teachers or a principal full of discipline.

Then the kids start a kicking game, pretty much straight up straight down, so that one kicker catches his own punt—the only catch in this game. Nobody cares. They just want to run, kick, and yell the freedom of their day-off. The bicycles join two rollerbladers, a moving horizontal backdrop to the vertical kicking game.

One last thud and the players disappear, only their voices (words even less discernible) walking back through the trees. They wander off in all directions, pairs, threesome, a little round one churning his legs to keep up, three spans of his legs to the others’ steps. Only the squirrels and birds and I remain to consider an empty, silent playground. Now so many distant words run together, they are like silence; the same as the blend of squirrels, birds, refrigerator hum, my breathing, the occasional turning of a book page, no silence at all.

Having celebrated the freedom of ignoring school bells, the kids go home to complain they have nothing to do. I do not have to hear those words to know they say them.

Candy Hamilton, an award winning journalist and poet, has also published essays and short stories in many literary magazines and national publications. She lives in Rapid City, S.D., with three rescued dogs and a ridiculous number of books.

white duck swimming on clear water — Photo by hasan kurt on Pexels.com

Duck Duck Goose

22 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Alice Lowe

Sociability—inclined by nature to companionship with others of the same species

Singular in her snowy splendor, the white goose floated majestically in the Balboa Park lily pond amid a raft of small mallard ducks, the males’ iridescent green heads, the females stippled brown. A groundskeeper told me, “She appeared one day and hasn’t left.” Was she lost, separated from her flock? Or, maybe, a loner within her own species, she chose this idyllic spot.

Geese and ducks are social animals, happiest in groups, gaggles of geese, rafts of ducks. Marine turtles, blue whales, snow leopards, polar bears, jaguars, orangutans, giant pandas, and platypuses are instinctively solitary. Compared to owls, sloths, deer, octopi, wolves, beavers, meerkats, and house cats (mine included), which are considered introverts.

The cartoon shows a passel of partying possums, smiling faces and wine glasses in hand. One is splayed out on the floor, face up. A bystander says to another: “He’s fine; he just plays dead when he’s had enough socializing.” I send the cartoon to a few friends, with the notation, “This is me.” Except I don’t play dead—I disappear.

Humans are social animals, though to varying degrees. Sociability is a measure of how much interaction with others a person needs. Social isolation can lead to adverse health consequences, as was seen during the Covid pandemic, but most of us have regular interaction with others at work or home or out and about. I’m an introvert but not a recluse. I like people, but I prefer them one to one, in small doses. Being coupled with a kindred spirit, my social needs are satisfied without leaving the house.

One day, months later, as my goose glides around the pond, her mirror image reflected by the water, I suddenly question her identity. Back home I study photographs—geese and ducks, white geese and white ducks, side by side. The shape of the head, the curve of the bill, the length of the neck. Now it’s obvious—she’s a Pekin duck. Not quite the outsider I’d thought, she’s not alone or lonely. I suspect she’s like me, as sociable as she wants or needs to be.

Alice Lowe’s flash nonfiction was published in September 2022 in The Bluebird Word, and also this past year in Change Seven, Drunk Monkeys, Midway, Eclectica, Eat Darling Eat, Fauxmoir, Idle Ink, Potato Soup, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. Alice writes about life, literature, food and family in San Diego, California, posted at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

Haleakala Sunrise

18 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Sherri Wright

The sky is pitch black and the temperature drops from seventy degrees to the thirties as our son-in-law drives the switchback road up the mountain. The trip is only twenty miles but it will take us more than two hours to reach the summit of Haleakala at 10,023 feet. Cramped into the back seat my husband, our nineteen year old grandson, and I flop into each other on every hairpin turn and our ears pop as we continue the climb. My daughter follows the route on her phone warning Azi of steep drop offs and approaching turns. Jenny wants to share with her husband and son the experience she remembers when she came here as a child.

At the top we step out of the warm car into a cutting wind and an immense dark sky — not just above but wrapping all around us — uninterrupted by tree or cloud or human made thing. And millions and millions of stars unobstructed by light pollution. The landscape is a monochrome grey surface of lava and rocks like I imagine on the face of the moon. We make our way up an uneven stone path toward the rim of the crater. Hundreds of people in parkas, rain coats and blankets murmur over the whisper of the wind. Jenny and I talk about how years ago we’d worn sandals and wrapped ourselves in beach towels but today the air feels so cold and the wind so bitter that I can’t stop shaking. Harry gives me his hoodie and swears he’s not cold. Sunrise won’t happen for another hour and a half. The thin air makes us feel light headed.

As the dark begins to lift, a warm blush rises above the horizon and exposes the width of the bowl and the depth of the cavern below. Few plants are able to survive here but scattered down the cinder slopes of the crater I see round grey bundles of silver sword. This ahinahina can live up to ninety years. Once in its lifetime it sends up a spectacular six foot stalk of vibrant purple flowers, then dies and scatters seeds to the wind. Here on Haleakala is the only place in the world the ahinahina grows. The mood is mystical. Early Hawaiians believed that the demigod Maui stood at this summit and lassoed the sun to slow its journey and lengthen the day. Thus, the name Haleakala means “house of the sun.”

In a swirl of light and grey and yellow, mauve and orange hues, a hush comes over the crowd and then an eerie silence. A silence I can feel in my chest and my bones. When the sun appears then quickly rises above the rim, the throng breaks into gentle applause. Black silhouettes in the glow, my daughter hugs her son.

Sherri Wright is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Dreamer’s Creative Writing, Persimmon Tree, Ocotillo Review, Delaware Beach Life, Raven’s Perch, and Quartet.

piano keys — Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash

For Sale: Kawai Upright Piano, $1,250

12 June 2023 / Editor

Nonfiction by Angela Kasumova

Available now! A Kawai Upright Piano, in excellent condition, beautiful walnut finish. Purchased new eight years ago by a father for his daughter. She’d been taking lessons for six years and practicing on a broken, hand-me-down piano, but when her father started having an affair, new things suddenly materialized. Like a computer, to replace the typewriter she struggled to write school papers on, and then a few months later, the piano. The daughter treasured this piano, its timely arrival allowing her to finally take pleasure in playing her most practiced and favorite pieces: Daydream by Tchaikovsky and To a Wild Rose by Edward MacDowell. And though she only played it for a year or so before she stopped lessons, it was the one thing she absolutely had to bring with her when she and her mother eventually fled. It moved with her from her semi-rural childhood house to an urban apartment, and finally to the condo her mother purchased upon her divorce, where it resides now. It’s been gently used these past few years to play Christmas songs or figure out melodies the daughter and her boyfriend enjoy, like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which is much harder than it sounds. It breaks this daughter’s heart to be selling this lovely instrument, but she needs extra money to pay for student health insurance, and this is the only item of value she owns. She doesn’t know how much she’ll miss this piano or how much she’ll regret letting it go. She doesn’t know how she’ll wish she’d found another way. Financial worries and unprocessed grief cloud her vision, but perhaps her loss may be your gain. See above: excellent condition, beautiful walnut finish.

Serious buyers only, please.

Angela Kasumova is a lifelong writer and reader with over a decade of experience working in the fields of mental health and education. She lives with her husband and sons near Boston, Massachusetts.

Category: Nonfiction (Page 5 of 11)

How to Iron

For Every October

Letter to an Estranged Father

Ruth and Oscar

Roller Coaster

My Father’s Coat, in Three Acts

Defining Silence

Duck Duck Goose

Haleakala Sunrise

For Sale: Kawai Upright Piano, $1,250

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories