Tag: perseverance

New Shorts

30 August 2024 / Editor

Nonfiction by Leanne Rose Sowul

I was so proud of them: cream-colored denim with turquoise flowers, bright green leaves, and cuffed bottoms. The perfect length to show off my new, longer, sixth-grade legs.

At recess, we sat on the low ledge of the concrete court while the boys played basketball. We watched them, waiting for them to look our way. We fidgeted, hands pulling the weeds that grew up between the cracks, fingers brushing the pollen off buttercups.

Then, one of the girls said, “Hey, is that leg hair?” I felt the brush of her hand, running up my shin from ankle to knee. She was right—my leg was covered in soft down. I hadn’t noticed.

“Hasn’t your mom taught you to shave yet?” she asked. The others turned, looked, laughed. My face flushed. I looked at the other girls’ legs. Smooth, white, perfect.

The boys were yelling, laughing, piling onto each other. They’d swarm back into school with dirty knees, sweaty hairlines, and smelly pits. Still, girls would line the hallways, trying to catch their eyes.

I wish I could say that I stood up then. Told that girl off for touching my leg without permission. Made an impassioned speech about a woman’s natural body. Strode into that throng of boys and grabbed the basketball. Walked into the school dirty and sweating, happy and uncaring.

Instead, I pulled down the hem of my new shorts as far as they could go and tucked my legs underneath me. Instead, when I got home that afternoon, I asked my mother for a razor.

Leanne Rose Sowul is an award-winning writer with publications in JuxtaProse, Under the Gum Tree, Five Minutes, and more; she has performed her essays for “Writers Read” at Lincoln Center and in collaboration with Carnegie Hall. Join her “Good Character” newsletter on Substack for more.

assorted color stained glass window — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I learned self-destruction from a cartoon

23 April 2023 / Editor

Poetry by Esther Sadoff

All morning, sweat springs from Arnold’s brow
as he awaits the beatdown at the end of the day:

a pummeling between him and a huge kid
and everyone knows who’s going to win.

I’ve been lowered a few rungs by self-deprecation.
Folded myself into impressive origami-smallness.

I’ve thrown in the towel, waved a white flag, and run
for the hills but in this episode of Hey Arnold!,

Arnold actually starts to hit himself in the school yard,
a dizzying kaleidoscope of faces spinning round,

but what stands out most are their egg-shaped
eyes vacant and hungry for action.

Arnold gives himself such an insane beating
that he scares the bully into submission.

I’d like to think of myself exactly like that:
two sides of the mirror fighting each other,

a reflection that won’t quit, myself standing over
(or under) my other self and declaring it some kind of win.

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Little Patuxent Review, Jet Fuel Review, Cathexis Poetry Northwest, Pidgeonholes, Santa Clara Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, among others.

landscape photography of sunflower field during sunset — Photo by Peter de Vink on Pexels.com

Consider the Dawn

14 November 2022 / Editor

Poetry by Jayne Martin

For Ellie

A raspberry wave splashing
Onto a blank canvas of possibility
Sunflowers turn their faces to the east
Eager to sip from the rising sun
Knowing nothing of the indigo of sorrow
That weighs upon my heart
Taken much too soon
Your loss still a fresh wound festering
regret for all I could have done
better
I drown in the silence
Force myself to rise and step into the day
It is a gift, this life
Each moment
As fleeting as the flight of fireflies
I will be like the sunflowers
My face to sun following its journey
across a serene sky
One breath in, one out. Repeat
Trusting in the passage of time to heal
Bowing my face to the west where
The sun drops into tomorrow
As I await
The dawn of another day to come

Jayne Martin is the author of “Tender Cuts,” a collection of microfiction and “The Daddy Chronicles-Memoir of a Fatherless Daughter.” She lives in California, but dreams of living in Paris. Visit her at www.jaynemartin-writer.com, Twitter: @Jayne_Martin, Instagram: jayne.martin.writer, TikTok: jaynemartin05

Voicemail

25 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Megan E. O’Laughlin

You can’t seem to do the things to help you feel better. You can’t keep food down, not with this feeling of something tied around your throat. You wake up in a cold sweat, a murder of crows in your head. You sigh when you send calls straight to voicemail; the number in the little red circle increases daily. You struggle to buy groceries, walk the dog, to drop the package off for the Amazon return. You can’t make that bottle of wine last longer than an hour. Your bad memories are now three-dimensional; they sit on the couch in the living room and eat all of your chips. You just can’t seem to do the things to help you feel better. You can’t even think of what those things are anymore.

Your friends and family notice. They say—are you okay? They seem worried, maybe even annoyed, and definitely tired. They all say it’s time to get some help; perhaps something can help, someone will tell you what to do, and then you’ll do it. If you get some help, they can feel some relief.

Something needs to change, but you aren’t sure what. You need to accept some things, but you aren’t sure how. So, you finally decide to do it. You type some words in the Google search bar: Therapists near my city. Therapists for depression. Therapists for anxiety. Therapists for grief. Therapy for I-don’t-know-what.

I probably received your message, but I rarely check my voicemail. Also, I don’t have any openings. And, I don’t take your insurance. Maybe your friend recommended me, your doctor gave you my name, or you liked my website. I’m that professional person with the education and approved license to do what you are finally ready to do: psychotherapy, some coping skills, process some childhood issues, psychological assessments, even medication management. We are psychiatrists, psychologists, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, or licensed counselors. You tried to figure out the difference between all these things, and it doesn’t make much sense. All the acronyms blur together: LICSW, PsyD, LMHC, not to mention the things we do, that we spend years and thousands of dollars on, the acronyms like DBT, CBT, ACT, EMDR. What are these things? You don’t know. You just need someone to call you back. There’s simply not enough of us to go around, especially now, especially since the pandemic, and we are burned out too. So, I’ll give you some referrals. Maybe they are full, too, and don’t call back either. Or you can go to that agency, where brand new therapists are overworked and underpaid, and yes, I used to work there too.

Maybe you come in after you waited for months. You will tell me all about your childhood three times a week. Or I will prescribe you three kinds of medication; only one is habit-forming, one causes terrible side effects, and one seems to help. Maybe I will teach you some coping skills, listen with care, and start and end our sessions on time. I might fall asleep, call you by the wrong name, or ask you the same questions every week, and you realize, wow, this therapist has a terrible memory. Maybe I’ll cry when you cry, and you feel seen. Or I’ll sit with a stone face, and when you ask me a question about myself, I’ll say, “why do you ask that question?” Maybe we’ll meet for years, months, or just a few times, but our time together will change your life. Perhaps you’ll meet with me and then decide to meet with someone else, and then they will help you change your life.

Please know it’s not your fault that it’s this complicated. Please know it’s not my fault either and yet here we are, in this system, that doesn’t work so well for any of us. It’s not perfect, but don’t give up after one call. Call again. Send an email. Show up, and then show up again. I will show up, too. In our perseverance, we might find the things to help you feel better.

Megan E. O’Laughlin is an emerging writer and MFA candidate at Ashland University. She writes about mental health, ghosts, and mythology. Megan works as a therapist specializing in mindfulness and trauma recovery. She lives on a peninsula by the sea in Washington state with her spouse, child, and two dogs.

worm s view photography of trees — Photo by Anton Atanasov on Pexels.com

Sunday Afternoon on the Eagle Trail

11 September 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Stacie Eirich

On a path towards peace, I wind my way past families, grandparents, children, couples, dogs, bikers — eclipse them and am surrounded by trees, stillness, and sun. Heat rises as I step past fallen leaves, pinecones, branches, roots, mud piles, marsh. Dry stretches crackle under my old tennis shoes, wet patches soggy with mud, leaving smears of earth on my calves.

At a fork in the dirt marked by wooden signs I read ‘Eagle Trail,’ follow the winged path deeper into the trees. Light shines through in spaces, dappling a canopy of leaves overhead, a crochet pattern of glaring green, rust red, burnt brown. I stop, listening to distant sounds of humanity, drinking in the moist scent of warmth. Only the breeze speaks, moving long grasses slow and tender. A rustle now and then, creatures scattering, hidden under fallen logs, months upon months of earth. A silent fluttering of yellow moth, I watch her fast flight. She could have spawn from the sun, she is so bright.

She lingers as the sun settles into my skin. Each step takes me further from the road, deeper down the path, zig-zagging past places where time matters. Into a space without, a space to just be.

There are signs of death among so much life, signals that nature runs a course and falls prey to a cycle. Not one destined by years or months, days or hours on a clock or calendar, but seasons of light and dark, warmth and chill, nourishment and hunger— the steady dawn and relentless night that comes. A tree may live hundreds, even thousands of years, but even it must rest. Like a giant trunk hewn from Earth, unmoored, with a pool of life underneath, even the greatest, oldest tree must sleep. (So many dead things amongst teeming life…the trail speaks to me of sadness and grief yet yields to acceptance and change.)

There is beauty in its space apart from us, in its perseverance to thrive. Wild iris, purple bulbs bursting from tall grass shoots in marsh waters. Ruby red Cape Fuchsia flowers droop upside down in bunches, their bleeding hearts like offerings beside the path. These are few but sparkle within a landscape of green, rust, brown. In the moss and algae covered waters swim turtles, their dark heads peeking up at blue bared sky.

I wait on the footbridge for a grandmother to lift her grandson to see them, exclaim how many he sees. Then he rushes past, small sandals clomping down the boards, grandma following. The turtles scatter as I bid them a quiet farewell.

I lift my face to the sun, breathe in—breathe out. Step forward, rising to meet the life that awaits on the other side.

Stacie Eirich is a writer, singer & library associate. She holds a Masters Degree in English Studies from Illinois State University. Her work has recently appeared in Art Times Journal, Avalon Literary Review & The Bluebird Word. She lives near New Orleans with three cats, two kids and one fish (www.stacieeirich.com).

photography of twigs on the ground — Photo by Daniel Spase on Pexels.com

We Were Bugs

24 August 2022 / Editor

Nonfiction by Thomas E. Strunk

Growing up in a trailer park, one rarely feels significant. But we still had the bugs to look down on. I don’t know what went wrong with me, a boy from the forest bothered by bugs. Sure I was fascinated by the water-skaters that danced over the crick out back. I stood in awe at the ant hills we’d come upon in the woods, but had no desire to poke them. At best I ignored the daddy-long-legs that crawled over the hillside in summer. Yet at some point in my youth a fear crept in at things that crawled, perhaps it was a late-night movie, but more likely the katabasis I endured when I was twelve, my descent multiple times beneath our siding-enclosed trailer.

A real man of the woods my father, not frightened to inch his way along the length of the trailer and then creep to the other side where with flashlight and wrench he could turn off and on again the water. He wasn’t the kind of man to worm his way out of his responsibilities.

“We’ve got to crawl under there so I can show you how to deal with the water.” But I was not that man and begged off the mission.

“Can’t you just do it before work?”

Until my father made it clear, “And leave you with no water all day? There is no choice.” For the workers were coming to the trailer park when he was at work, and I was at summer bored and idle and able to go inching my way under the trailer.

And so I followed him on my belly the long way – the door through the siding at the back left of the trailer, our journey’s destination, the water pipes at the front right, so I could learn, like him, how to turn the water off and then on.

The next day, alone and reluctant, I entered through the siding door and left the daylight behind me. I held the flash light before me but did not look at what it illuminated for fear what I might see; rather I wriggled in the light’s general direction. I crawled with all that was under there in the darkness, sweeping cobwebs as I went. I made it to the water pipes and plied the wrench hurriedly, hoping I had twisted it enough to choke off the water. And then the return, always harder than the descent. I turned myself around on the dirt and made my way towards the light peeking through the siding door, far in the distance at first. Yet I hastened and did not turn to see what I left or what followed behind me. I came at last to the exit and crossed the threshold.

When I emerged from beneath the trailer into the light, I did not come forth braver or with new knowledge that I gained along the way, but joyful to see the blue sky and its birds free to fly above the ground. I feverishly shook off the dirt and whatever bugs had found me, never wanting to know their wisdom.

Thomas E. Strunk explores nature and working class life and strives to express the longing for spiritual, emotional, and political liberation. His literary work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pinyon, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Northern Appalachia Review and East Fork Journal. Thomas blogs at LiberationNow.org and lives in Cincinnati.