An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: gratitude (Page 3 of 3)

Grateful Heart

Nonfiction by Allison Wehrle

The rose, its five-inch bloom too heavy for its stem, brushed against my leg. It hung over the edged garden bed onto the narrow walkway alongside our garage. I had planted this rosebush just a few months prior, sprinkling its roots with ashes as I emptied the contents of a paw-printed urn into their final resting place. It flourished quickly and now demanded my attention, just like its furry counterpart. I set my toddler down and knelt in front of the insistent plant, cupping the massive flower in my hands. Pulling the pruning shears out of my back pocket, I clipped the bowed stem along with a couple other blossoms, dense petals still unfurling. I brought the trio into the house and placed them in my grandma’s delicate bud vase.

Jack, our beloved black cat (who once shattered a mirror) lived to be 13 and passed on the Ides of March. I acquired him when he was just five weeks old and, as far as either of us was concerned, I was his mama. My constant companion, this fluffy soot sprite blossomed into a stunning feline, with plush fur, inquisitive green eyes, and a supple, panther-like tail. 

Our family – and square footage – grew considerably over the years: cat, husband, kids; apartment, condo, house. And with the house came a (postage stamp of a) yard. Finally, I could get my hands dirty and plant something other than the same boring annuals in a window box. Perennials. Pollinators. Vegetables. I wanted them all. But then I had a baby, who was too mobile come spring for me to do much gardening, so I stuck some petunias in a pot and tended to my offspring instead. We spent that summer on a blanket in the back yard, while the cats lounged on the deck.

Iggy, a big blue tomcat that spent his early years on the mean streets of Chicago, adopted me from the shelter where I volunteered at the time, not realizing that Jack and I were a package deal. He had the softest fur and the sharpest claws; the tiniest meow and the loudest purr; the meanest glare and the biggest heart. Both a lover and a biter, he was the toughest ‘fraidy cat I’ve ever known. 

Iggy assumed the alpha male role upon arrival. He bit Jack’s ears to assert dominance and to try and tame that free spirit. He chattered angrily at the birds outside the living room window, to show them who’s boss. But the night a mouse dared enter our apartment, Iggy dropped all pretense. He leapt onto the kitchen table, prancing around like a housewife from the fifties, leaving Jack to deal with the squeaky intruder. Despite their roughhousing, Jack worshipped Iggy. Iggy begrudgingly came to love Jack. They made such a great pair.

If cats had middle names, Jack’s would have been Trouble. Although it was acute kidney failure – not curiosity – that took him from us, it became clear early on that his nine lives would be nowhere near enough, given his penchant for mischief. Above all, Jack adored us, his family, and was happiest when we were all at home. Although he missed it by a day, Jack would have loved lockdown. 

Each summer, we made small improvements to the yard. We replaced the ugly, overgrown yew with a Japanese maple, thinned the hostas, and buried tulip bulbs among the boxwoods. Then came the year everything changed. 

Stuck at home, awash in postpartum hormones, suddenly unemployed and without childcare, my home felt more like a prison than a refuge and I longed to be outdoors. The neighbors had removed a large catalpa tree, sending a stream of sunlight flooding into our backyard. I wanted to plant a rose. A rose for Jack. The new baby hampered my gardening ambitions; the slow reopening of non-essential businesses (like nurseries) derailed it entirely. And so we spent another idle summer in the backyard, all except for Iggy, who was content to lounge in the doorway and sniff the warm breeze or snooze in the sunbeams.  

Not wanting to miss another planting season, I ordered plants online the next February. I chose Jack’s rose almost instantly, an exceptional, show-stopping hybrid with jumbo blooms in a velvety crimson. Even its name spoke to me: Grateful Heart. I debated whether to preemptively order a plant for Iggy, too, even as he lay draped across my lap, purring. Pragmatism edged out my guilt, as his health was steadily declining. Although the vet once declared him to be the “Timex of felines”, illness and old age soon won out. 

I kept coming back to Crescendo, a delicate tea rose with petals that morphed from white to blush to pink as they unfurled. I perused the recommended add-ons and selected a highly rated plant food that edged my total up just enough to qualify for free shipping, but decided against the bone meal, which seemed morbidly redundant. 

Back outside, I moved to the other rosebush. Planted the same day and enhanced with the same organic matter, for weeks it remained a cluster of thorny, lifeless branches. Had I not been so invested in its survival I would have likely given up when it first failed to thrive. But now, this late bloomer had rewarded my patience with a solitary, breath-taking rose. 

As I reached to clip the single rose from its stocky bush, I punctured my thumb on a razor-sharp thorn lurking just below the leaves. It was then I knew I’d chosen the right cultivar.  “Hi, buddy” I whispered, as I pressed thumb and forefinger together to discourage bleeding. Then, holding the stem by the scruff this time, I nestled Iggy’s lone flower into the vase, the perfect complement to Jack’s showy blooms.


Allison Wehrle is a former magazine editor, classically trained musician and aspiring essay writer. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two human children.

Three Scenes in Sunlight

Nonfiction by Bonnie Demerjian

Mother and Child

I hold in my hand a creased black and white photograph, Mom holding infant Me. We’re both smiling for the camera, my father the cameraman, perhaps? With squinting eyes and open mouth, I was a picture of pure delight. Mom smiling too, her long dark hair in plaits and pinned up, a most unattractive style, but fashionable in the 40s. There we pose on that sun-filled afternoon before a house, its white planks brilliant in the clear light, a light as uncomplicated as our smiles.

How often I’ve studied this moment in its informal, close-knit sweetness. At times I’ve felt it a pang, knowing that the innocence of that captured instant was soon, very soon, to be shattered by adultery and divorce, not once but twice. So unknowing we were that day. And what about the photographer, certainly the man I was to meet only years later and the instrument of heartache. What did he know as he pressed the shutter?

I took the picture up another day not long ago. This time, instead of musing on impending pain, I saw, with a flash of insight, wordless uncontaminated love, only love and the miracle of our braided existence. An immensity of stardust commingled in we two. A moment, like that, so brief, so intense, will never come again, but, like the deep tolling of a massive bell, keeps on sounding.

Love   

We met just before hitchhiking became life-threatening. Our college was on a hill several miles above town. There was a bus for those of us without cars, but of course it never ran when you wanted to get away from campus. So, we walked out to the road and stuck out a thumb. What? Me worry?

A few cars went by and then an aging MGB, a red sporty thing, pulled over. I had seen the driver in orchestra. Later, he told me he had been eyeing me too from the trumpet section lined up behind the cellos. Trumpets didn’t have a lot to do while the string players sawed through their parts and they, they were always guys, had plenty of opportunity to check out girls.

So, on a clear spring afternoon, with a breeze from the distant glacier-hollowed lake fresh on my face, I hitched a ride down the hill to town. I wasn’t afraid and even a little intrigued. After all, I had been aware of that evaluating look behind my back. The beer we shared that day, with the small searching talk that followed, are lost to time, but that brief ride marked the first mile on our lifetime journey.                

This Place

I’m standing in the field behind the barn, that matriarch of the farm. She’s over a century old, red, of course, and looming three full stories. It’s a pleasantly hot late summer afternoon in this place, familiar and dear since childhood, home to grandparents, mother, and, for a time, to me. There are sprawling evergreens nearby, scenting the air with their piney aroma, trees planted by my grandfather to succeed his aging orchards. The Senecas had orchards here, too, before they were driven away. We found their flinty arrowheads and smooth grinders when the soil was turned. Dried weeds whisper softly in a light breeze. It stirs the dusty scent of grasses flavored with a hint of warm tar from the road nearby. This time of day the birds are still and only a few desultory crickets scrape away at my feet.

I’ve come today with a purpose, for this place will soon enough be sold, destined for an unseen future. I say goodbye to the barn, dim and faintly redolent from barrels of cherry brandy, product of a damaged crop, we savored long ago. Farewell to the farm house, the gray and sagging sheds, the creek bubbling to the lake in cheerful conversation. Today I raise my face, lift arms, and give thanks to all who lived and worked this land and for all the years I’ve tramped its acres. This unassuming farm, its fertile soil and deep wells, embraced and nourished many lifetimes, so, speaking for them all, I stand in a golden moment tasting of gratitude and sadness.


Bonnie Demerjian writes from Alaska. She has written as journalist and as author of four books about Alaska’s history, human and natural. Her emerging poetry and flash work has appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Tidal Echoes, Bluff and Vine, and Blue Heron Review.

The Package

Microfiction by Kenneth M. Kapp

Bob was a joker with a permanent smile. If asked, he’d answer: “Told myself a joke and it’s a corker.”

Now a widower he lived in a small Milwaukee bungalow. A sign on his mailbox pointed to a milkcrate below: Please leave all packages here. Old and still smiling, he made his final arrangements.

His time was up. His cremains were delivered to his home and left in the milkcrate. A curious neighbor checked and discovered the package he had preaddressed. A cloud enclosed the return address: If unclaimed return to SENDER (a large arrow pointed up).


Kenneth M. Kapp was a Professor of Mathematics, a ceramicist, a welder, an IBMer, and yoga teacher. He lives with his wife and beagle in Wisconsin, writing late at night in his man-cave. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. He’s a homebrewer and runs whitewater rivers. Visit www.kmkbooks.com.

Mud Season

Poetry by Emily Donaldson

A scrambled egg breakfast,
a pocket clementine, tea.

Heavy boots pulled over wool socks,
knowing each step will be unsteadied
by the hungry latch of mud season.

Resident red breasted robins dart in undergrowth.
Crows call to each other from the wood.
Steam rises from the tea, curls like frost smoke
above the last vestiges of snow.

A wrack line of melting ice gravid with topsoil, softening.

The mud-stirred rush, sharp and sweet.
The ovary of a former flower, pulled first from its branch,
and then from my pocket. Clementine peels dropped as eggshells,
as petals. Pulling spongy ribbons of pith from half-moons, as fine as root hairs,
jagged as lightening.

A striking vision of seasonal return, this jeweled orbit:
ruby-crowned kinglets, blue-headed vireos,
yellow-bellied sapsuckers reclaiming their home
amidst black capped chickadees and wheeling starlings.

Calling the promise of nests, of precious eggs cradled in
loose twigs, chaos ordered with care. Their nocturnal flights
under cover of darkness like glittering comets,
bringing new life to beloved ground.

Showing us to make home in the dead wood.

And I, having devoured the world in a morning,
wingless, nursing citrus sting on cracked lip,
whisper thanks.


Emily Donaldson writes as a way to connect with everything around her, and to explore the relationship between the natural and our inner worlds.

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