IT’S TOO BAD we lost that branch,” my mom says. “Now there’s just a big hole in the middle.” We are sitting on the patio looking at her Japanese maple tree that lost one of its main branches to last winter’s storm. Her comment catches me off guard. Is she talking about the tree or me? [...]
My Place in the Garden
by Heather Sullivan
Inheritance
by Darlene Young
I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves, and an old dress I claimed just because it looked like you. But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress, the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past I can’t make out your face and now I fear I never really saw [...]
Early Harvest
by Melissa Dalton-Bradford
Midsummer. Eventide. Live waters. You: broad-backed bundle of golden sheaves hewn down, washed, rushed headlong through death’s threshing current. You: pre-ripe, holy harvest wrested from these, your people; gathered to those, your people who attend from iridescent pastures. You: Firstborn son, First fruits of my womb, Firstling of our flock, First raised of [...]
On Loss
by Liz Busby
IT WAS MY LAST WEEK on study abroad in England, and as with the last of anything, I wanted to make it count. Therefore I was determined to enjoy the play we were seeing at the National Theatre in London, A Matter of Life and Death, even though the plot summary sounded dubious to me—“It [...]
Falls, Gardens, Deaths
by Adam Greenwood
HE SAYS IN NEW MEXICO the weeks before Thanksgiving are High Fall, autumn in abundance, all bright colors and fruits. Thanksgiving is the high point of that season, and also its end. Then it’s whooping crane season, Christmas, and winter. In the weeks before Thanksgiving the cottonwood leaves turned bright pumpkin yellow. We were driving along [...]
Too Late to Say Good-bye
by Dalene R. Rowley
THE SPAGHETTI NOODLES always arrived from Portland in a two-foot long box, carefully curled in half at one end, which made it just possible to ease them slowly into the rapidly boiling water and cook them whole. We never ate them whole except when we had the missionaries over for dinner. It was Dad’s favorite way [...]
Dying Hair
by Darlene Young
Leaning over the bathtub rinsing the dye out of my hair, I notice that the droplets splattered on the porcelain look like blood. It reminds me of my mother, whose death had nothing to do with blood or bathtubs or hair-dye, but who had always prided herself on not coloring her hair: “It crosses the [...]
September Morn
by Melonie Cannon
Dawn rides the morning air over silent houses and abandoned gardens, flickering light along the edge of the windowsill, ushering in my grandmother’s fearful cry. Like a crumbling yellow leaf dropping suddenly from an ancient oak, the stillness shudders and startles me from my dreams. I find her, golden, warm and white. Eyes, closed as [...]
Eve’s Blood
by Elizabeth Cranford
Did Eve fear death the first time she bled? Did she yell for Adam, sweating from his labor, to come running, afraid he would be alone again? How many days did she wait and wonder, cleaning, bleeding, avoiding her husband’s glances and rough hands? Did she dress and trudge through mud to the altar kneeling [...]
Threads
by DeAnn Campbell
I AM CLEANING OUT THE GUEST ROOM closet in my dad’s house when I find a quilt wrapped in plastic with only its backside showing. I call to my brother Matt. He has lived here the longest and seems to know the most about the closets and their contents. He’s been married only a few [...]
And Should We Die—All Is Well: Doctrines to Comfort Grieving Parents on the Mormon Trail
by Patricia Rushton
“In 1847 Jedediah Grant led a company of Latter-day Saint pioneers from Winter Quarters, Nebraska, to the Salt Lake Valley. Not long before the company arrived in the valley, his six-month-old daughter, Margaret, contracted cholera and died. Her body was buried close to the trail, protected by only a mound of freshly dug clay. Soon [...]
Hands
by Valerie Nielson Williams
I walked into the room where you were; You looked so peaceful, resting there. So natural, like you’d looked many times over the two decades I’d watched you sleep. I leaned over and kissed your lips still warm, But not reciprocating now. I smoothed your snow-white hair with my hand. By small measure my heart [...]
Somewhere
by Sharlee Mullins Glenn
She strains toward heaven arms outstretched like a child wanting to be held then falls back, outspent subdued by gravity’s ponderous sway How long must she stay suspended as she is between fire and air between here and there incarnation and release? Do not rage, mother (leave the raging to the poet and his father, [...]
Take Root Downward, Bear Fruit Upward
by Sara Greenwood
BETSEY’S BACK ARCHES as the chemotherapy drips into her blood. Transferred to Oncology from ICU, we start this medication the same day as a last ditch effort to save her life. I flee the room, the night she needs me, crying about the pain my one-year-old suffers fresh out of brain surgery, and my inability to [...]