Tag: remembrance (Page 1 of 2)

rocks shaped into a heart in shallow water
Photo by John Cardamone on Unsplash

The Gift of Your Voice

9 September 2026 /

Nonfiction by Stephanie Shafran

[Trigger warning: contains reference to suicide]

Hello children, this is Daddy. Have you been good children while I’ve been away? I hope so. I just got off the big airplane after flying in the sky, all the way from Florida to New York. First the plane climbed up and up into the clouds and after a while it straightened out and zoomed along faster than you can imagine. Then it dropped slowly down and down until safely landing and letting all the passengers climb down a ladder and walk into the airport. That’s where I am right now, and I miss you both so much. I’m coming home tomorrow and can’t wait to hug and kiss you hello.

Muted for sixty years, your voice comes alive for the first time tonight, on this self-recorded “Voice-o-graph.” No gift could ever top this one.

You recorded this message at the airport, on your way back home from a business trip in Florida. Were you homesick? In the middle of the small record, a label, in your handwriting, reads: 11-16-54, New York arr from Melbourne Beach Florida, To Stephy & Lee.

I’d have my fourth birthday in a month. Lee had recently turned seven.

You’d end your life just six and a half years later.

Stephanie Shafran retired from a long career as Spanish teacher and school counselor. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Earth’s Daughters, Slant, Persimmon Tree, The Bluebird Word, and The Sun; in anthologies such as Ophelia’s Mom, by Nina Shandler, Ed.D. Stephanie published a chapbook Awakening in 2020.

Editor’s Note: September is Suicide Prevention Month. Resources are available through the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and also on the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP). Raise awareness, reduce the stigma, and encourage action to help others.

bird on wire in rain
Photo by Abhinav Arya on Unsplash

Post-Opus

1 September 2026 /

Poetry by Guadalupe Palos

It’s 3:42 AM when I finally get to sit down,
Does the rain reach your roof too?
Our used-to-be shared roof watches me
pretend you are alive sometime, somewhere
else. Why won’t God let me know the you before
I was born? I saw your toddler smile weeks
after your passing for the first time, your
self showing in sepia tones. I think
heaven is a space where we can see each
other in all years. I could isolate all that is
your continuation inside of me and give it
back to you as a gift, where my toddler smile
and your toddler smile can be under one
roof again.

G.L. Palos is a poet who has lived in desert cities for over half of her life. She has a Bachelor’s in Religious Studies and has since entered and exited various service-based fields. Love, consciousness, nature, her current nonfiction read, and beauty inspire the majority of her writing.

white and yellow daffodils on mountainside
Photo by Laila on Unsplash

Airy Kiss

1 September 2026 /

Poetry by Diane Bier

We will meet you at the mountain top—
where the eagles soar and the hawks land—
the land the ravens know. Unearthing the trail
beneath the dogwood trees—we’ll follow
their petals on the wind. We watch for black
squirrels and red foxes, gather daffodils,
tumble over heart rocks, all signs of you.
We climb, your mom with, a long processional—
backpacking a picnic feast and all the dogs you
never met so you can kiss them one by one.
Stumbling over words, breathless prayers fade—
like ombre butterflies releasing sorrow.
You bestow an airy kiss as we stand
greeting you with daffodils hand in hand.

Diane Bier is a binge reader who always has a book or camera in hand. She has an MFA from William Paterson University where her writing reflects her passion for social change. She resides in NJ with her family and dog where she enjoys gardening and walking.

blue salvia flower close up
Photo by Francesca Piva on Unsplash

I miss my mother on summer nights

1 September 2026 /

Poetry by Terry O’Shaughnessy

I miss my mother on summer nights,
her silhouette crossing the dark garden,
moving with the heavy watering can to
soak the pots of blue salvia
and pink daisies
and all the stars of Bethlehem,
floating white
in the twilight.

No food, only flowers here,
her labouring shoulders inside shirt and vest
cold, even on warm nights like this,
even as she lifts the cool water,
the woods behind her hidden
in the vacuum of night
where the green darkness
smells of light.

When I think I once lay
within this silhouette,
and this moving shadow that
gave birth to me, I think:
only the two of us, here.
in the dark garden, not knowing yet
there will only be the two of us
at the end—
then, will I hold her shoulders,
that moving silhouette,
and try to let her go
when she leaves me in winter
and when later,
I will miss her most
on dark summer nights.

Terry O’Shaughnessy is a former journalist, editor and recovering advertising copywriter. Kayaking and looking for owls in the wild are current pursuits along with traveling and tending a large herb garden in the summer months.

Photo by PAYAL ASTHANA on Unsplash

Faded Picks and Broken Strings for Eric

10 May 2026 /

Poetry by James Fleet Underwood

My gait aches, Kwan says I’m stooping,
and the nose I broke brawling with your cousin
wheezes in the winter, but more times than not
I’m staring at my toes and laughing
as if I just found the man I was looking for
standing sunburned in the grass.

You chat easy with us here, old friend,
our table cleared of plate and cloth,
smoking Drum and pushing coffee round a saucer
with your thumb, that waggish smile
tucked in several years of beard, and if I
don’t recognize the manifestation of your intent,
I know it’s love you always bring me.

We’re taking longer walks these days,
Kwan and I, going back to Strummer’s Hollow,
to that shed where you holed up with your Gibson,
where you wrote that tune of gals and gin,
a raunchy 12 bar riffed off with a grin,
and we kick up faded picks & broken strings – I
think she found that charm of yours,
the one you swore the barmaid stole in Reno.

Your spirit’s strong and flies here with October,
a stormy Michigan wet wood thing, though I
know you bang your can amongst the living,
and I wake those nights, hear a strumming,
get honey from the bed, and we walk the trails
swinging lanterns, asking wisdom from the bears.

James Fleet Underwood writes poems rooted in place, season, and daily life. His work explores quiet relationships with the natural world and the small rituals that shape human presence within it. Find him on X: @jamesfleetpoems and Substack: jamesfleetpoems.substack.com

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

The Farm, Three Months After Dad’s Death

13 April 2026 /

Poetry by Claudia Kessel

Paint chips off the deck
Bare feet smear sun across wood
A melting of hours

Orange, nameless barn cat
slinks between blue hydrangeas
Day drifts to evening

Something splinter-sharp
slices August’s humid breath:
Cicada vibration

Trucks speed the backroads
Launching from lily to lily
bees zip across faces

Black walnut fingers
release twittering sparrows
Limbs curtsy in wind

My son collects eggs
from the white-rimmed chicken coop
His life has not changed

Abandoned silo
Mourning dove’s alto lament
Swallow’s coloratura

Mulberries scatter
Stain the gravel indigo
Wasps inspect new jewels

My fingers trace keys
of his Baldwin piano
Ivory absent of his broad thumbs

Only when I sing
alone by his piano
do I un-trap myself from myself

Sunset’s greasy smudge
Not necessarily happiness
Neither unhappiness

Green dappled stillness
No one in particular
loves me today

In his gray armchair
at dawn, with coffee and cat
Scent lingers in cloth

Slippers empty of feet
A cane leans against the chair
How much of him in me

My body breathes here
in the home of pine and glass
he dreamed, built, and died in

Claudia Kessel works as a grant writer and musician in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her poetry has been published in Richmond Magazine as a finalist in the 2021 Shann Palmer Poetry Contest, awarded by James River Writers, in the 2024 Poetry Society of Virginia anthology, and in various literary journals.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

In a far field

13 February 2025 /

Poetry by Mark Clemens

for Charles Everett Clemens, 1922-1992

The ground
where my father lies
by now has settled some.

The clods
that tumbled moist
from a digger’s spade three decades past
by now have crumbled
as he crumbled some
between his fingers in the garden
so long ago.

The sod
that flourished green upon his grave
by now has withered at the fringe
and a few hard brown blades
bristle in the wind.

The flowers
though faded pale
and clasped dry against the coffin lid
are yet the flowers his loving flesh
laid white and fresh
within his final grasp.

And in a ruffling breeze beneath sun-shot clouds
where sparrows harry dumb black crows
birds feel free to light upon his plot
to hop and, pausing, bend eyes sidewise
for some grub from his piece of earth
one place like any other
down the mounded rows.

Good ground
the ground where my father lies.
lovely ground
by now.

Born in Missouri and raised in Iowa, Mark Clemens earned an M.F.A. from the University of Montana. Through the following years, he wrote part-time while working at newspapers, state agencies, and colleges. Now he writes full-time where he lives on the Quimper Peninsula by the Salish Sea in Washington State.

Photo by Kacper Szczechla on Unsplash

Tilt

13 December 2024 /

Poetry by Kersten Christianson

Under the Falling
Yellow Cedar moon
we solstice. Beef roast

in the slow cooker,
ham bakes in the oven.
Stars and moon align,

twinkle in cavernous
bookshelves, where
the printed word basks

in the spoken. My dad
and brother taste test
each other’s pickled fish,

banter over the better.
Gloria’s cake sports
jingle bells, boughs

from last weekend’s
tree falling in a windstorm.
We have come together

before and will again
to celebrate the U-turn
in darkness; name those

no longer with us
in this life, but within
memory’s reach.

Kersten Christianson is a poet and English teacher from Sitka, Alaska. She is the author of Curating the House of Nostalgia (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2020) and Something Yet to Be Named (Kelsay Books, 2017). She serves as poetry editor of Alaska Women Speak. Kersten savors road trips, bookstores, and smooth ink pens.

Photo by Thomas Fore on Unsplash

Nana’s Christmas Cactus

4 December 2024 /

Nonfiction by MD Bier

We were always visiting my grandparents. Pop Pop grew roses. Nana grew Christmas cactuses. Every spring and summer they appeared. They took over the breezeway. These long, small white containers a couple of inches high filled with Christmas cactus on every available shelf and open space. They grew so viney draping to the floor.

In winter, they mysteriously disappeared. Vanished. The breezeway too cold for them. Unheated, they would have shivered and died.  Don’t know where Nana put them in winter. No one remembers them blooming at Christmas or being displayed on the hutch, coffee tables, or end tables. Every spring they reappeared like magic taking up the same amount of space as the previous summer.

Two of my younger sisters asked Nana for her Christmas cactus. She gave them a few pieces to take home. Those few pieces grew into a huge Christmas cactus. Each sister has pieces of the original and grew their own Christmas cactus. They are now old. Forty, fifty years old. The original older than that.  Blooming year after year. Becoming more beautiful the older they get. Elegance in aging.

She has well-grounded roots. No prickly points. Smooth, dark green leaves. Growing high. Bushy. Numerous strands of stems and leaves, some trailing. The oldest stems thick and woody. Not really a cactus. She loves dappled sunlight and lots of talking.

When the birds fly south in September, it’s lights out at five o’clock. A few months of the year, Planty likes it cool and dark so she blooms for Christmas. It’s her winter. Once the first buds appear and as the first double petaled fuchsia flowers blossom, we tell her she’s gorgeous.

Pop Pop’s roses need lots of water, and Nana’s Christmas cactus needs little.

My Nana was low maintenance like the Christmas cactus. Not fussy or prickly. Well grounded. Spunky. Her Irish skin burned in the sun just like her Christmas cactus. Pro anything Irish. Worked hard. Cooked holiday dinners, not everyday dinners.  College-educated, well-read, artist extraordinaire. Wished I had asked for her art books. Her vision grew thick and woody like her Christmas cactus stems, and we saw less and less of her after my Pop Pop passed away. Their charm couldn’t charm the grief away. Nowadays, even though Nana is long gone, she showers all our cactuses with her magic, ensuring they bloom beautifully at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Extremely healthy. Age defying. I don’t think when Nana gave my sisters those few pieces of Christmas cactus, she ever expected them to live, let alone create five other plants miraculously still living over half a century later.

MD Bier is a binge reader and always has book. Her writing reflects her passion for social change and social issues. She is part of several writing communities where she writes and studies. She’s published in various literary journals. She resides in NJ with her family and dog.

pink carnation flower head in a swimming pool
Photo by Martin de Arriba on Pexels.com

Marilyn Monroe’s Lipstick

1 September 2024 /

Poetry by Julie Evan Smith

She was good to me
Applying me with just the right amount of pressure
Never smearing me on in haste.
And when I disappeared in the act of kissing
It was always a sad farewell
As I liked the feel of her lips moving when she shaped words
And spoke in her soft voice.

Revlon retired my name after her death.
I am the last one of my kind
Collected after her passing
Along with receipts and gum wrappers
Furs and gowns and gloves
A frenzy of acquisition
By people greedy for the smallest part of her.

Author’s Note: According to www.juliensauctions.com, an item up for auction was one of Marilyn Monroe’s tubes of used Revlon lipstick in “Bachelor’s Carnation” dated 1947 and described as “a virtual time capsule of one of the star’s nights out on the town.”

Julie Evan Smith‘s work has been published online at On The Run Fiction and StreetLit. In addition to flash fiction and poetry she has performed personal essays at storytelling shows in Los Angeles and New York. She loves reading history, wearing boots, and eating candy corn.

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