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Fall/Winter 2011/2012 Edition of Magnets and Ladders

MAGNETS AND LADDERS
Active Voices of Writers with Disabilities
Fall/Winter 2011/2012

Editorial and Technical Staff

  • Coordinating Editor: Marilyn Brandt Smith
  • Fiction: Lisa Busch, Kate Chamberlin, Valerie Moreno, Marilyn Brandt Smith, and Abbie Johnson Taylor
  • Nonfiction: Kate Chamberlin, Valerie Moreno, Nancy Scott, John W. Smith, and Marilyn Brandt Smith
  • Poetry: Lisa Busch, Valerie Moreno, Nancy Scott, and Abbie Johnson Taylor
  • Technical Assistant: Jayson Smith
  • Internet Specialist: Julie Posey

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Submission Guidelines

Disabled writers may submit up to three selections per issue. Deadlines are February 15 for the Spring/Summer issue, and August 15 for the Fall/Winter issue. Writers must disclose their disability in their biography or in their work. Biographies may be up to 100 words in length, and should be written in third-person.

Poetry maximum length is 50 lines. Memoir, fiction, and nonfiction maximum length is 2500 words. In all instances, our preference is for shorter lengths than the maximum allowed. Please single-space all submissions, and use a blank line to separate paragraphs and stanzas. It is important to spell check and proofread all entries. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are permitted provided you own the copyright to the work. Please cite previous publisher and/or notify if work is accepted elsewhere.

We do not feature advocacy, activist, “how-to,” or “what’s new” articles regarding disabilities. Innovative techniques for better writing as well as publication success stories are welcome. Announcements of writing contests with deadlines beyond October 1 and April 1 respectively are welcome. Content will include many genres, with limited attention to the disability theme.

Please email all submissions to submissions@magnetsandladders.org. Paste your submission and bio into the body of your email or attach in Microsoft Word format. Submissions will be acknowledged within two weeks. You will be notified if your piece is selected for publication.

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About Behind Our Eyes

Behind Our Eyes, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization enhancing the opportunities for writers with disabilities. Our anthology published in 2007, “Behind Our Eyes: Stories, Poems, and Essays by Writers with Disabilities,” is available at Amazon.com and from other booksellers. It is available in recorded and Braille format from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Several members of our group meet by moderated teleconference twice monthly to hear speakers; share work for critique; or receive tips on accessibility, publication, and suggested areas of interest.

Our mailing list is a low-traffic congenial place to share work in progress; learn about submission requests; and to ask and answer writing questions. We are preparing for a second anthology and would like to have you come aboard. For the conference phone number and PIN, join our mailing list by contacting Abbie Johnson Taylor.

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Contents

Editors’ Welcome

Our first “Magnets and Ladders” contained twenty-five articles, stories, and poems. Thanks to your support, promotion, and contribution, we were challenged to expand the length of the magazine, and to make tough decisions about what to accept. Poets suffered most, since half our submissions came from that form. Only a third of the pieces in the magazine are poetry. We had over seventy-five submissions. That would seem miniscule to long-standing magazines, but it was a wonderful surprise for us. A Canadian and a South African author complement offerings from the United States.

Our presentation will vary with each issue depending on the material received. This time we received a number of seasonal pieces–this is not your mama’s Christmas party, not your high school Valentine dance–which make up a thought-provoking final section for our issue.

There will always be a writers’ section early in the issue. This one includes two fictional stories about writers taking direction from questionable and sometimes mindboggling authorities. There are prompts with specific exercises and contests to enter. One is our own short story contest. Of course, there is “Much Ado About Words.”

Poets cross bridges from entirely different perspectives. Life’s bumps leave some fictional and in-the-flesh characters with complicated choices and unconventional resolutions.

Read our submission guidelines before submitting for the Spring/Summer issue. We have made some clarifications which will be of benefit to everyone writing and editing. Our team has been busy. The deadline is February fifteenth, with posting sometime in April.

If you didn’t submit to this issue or your work was not accepted, we’re anxious to see what you’re writing now. Try flash (short-short) fiction; great writing ideas you learned from a workshop; memoirs that don’t focus on the disability theme; fictional characters who try the unexpected; and poetry in a unique form or with a humorous theme. We like what we saw this time, but we want to continue to broaden our scope, expanding creativity and literary quality. We have editors who may be able to help if you put the word “Help” in the subject line of your submission message. If you’re reading this on the web and want to receive each edition via Email, please subscribe by clicking here.

Grab your oxygen bottle and jump into “Thin Air,” our first magazine section containing fiction and memoir.

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I. THIN AIR

Snapshots of Life After Abuse, memoir, Nicole Bissett

“You wanna leave?” His slurred tone was full of venom. “You wanna move out and be on your own like your friend Dianne and bring home a boy toy once in a while? Fine! You won’t get a dime from me. Not one dime.”

This was typical of my husband’s alcoholic tirades, but on this night, he wouldn’t leave me alone. We both knew it was over; it was just a matter of trying to work out the details civilly, which was clearly not going to happen.

All night, he had been trying to “talk” with me while drunk. I learned long ago in a recovery program for families of alcoholics that it was best for me to leave the scene in these times. I wound up sleeping on the floor in the small room we used as an office. I had to sleep in front of the door, because it didn’t even have a knob, much less a lock. I kept the cordless phone close by in case I needed to call 911. That was how I spent the last night of our married life together.

I won’t lie; leaving my marriage in 2007 was the most frightening risk I’d ever taken. Not only did I have to take this risk, but I had to take the chance that my son, Eddie, then twelve (thankfully not biologically my ex’s), would come out better for it.

There were losses that I needed to grieve. I no longer had daily contact with my thirteen year old stepson, Taylor, whom I had a hand in raising for six years. I had grown to love him, and missed him terribly. As a stepmother, I had no legal rights for visitation. Worst of all, word got back to me that he was being told that I never loved him. I lost my home, what remained of my financial stability, and the parts of my husband I still loved.

There were two distinct sides to him, and the good side made it all too easy to help me forget what he was capable of. He took me to plays; cooked for me; wrote poetry to me; walked on the beach with me; helped me with homework in difficult classes throughout my college years; drove me to and from school; and we could once talk for hours. This side of him was difficult to walk away from, which was why I started dating him again a year after the divorce was finalized. I don’t regret it because he watched me succeed during that time.

Meanwhile, Eddie and I lived in a studio apartment for eighteen months. I supported him and myself on $1200 a month, with the rent being $805. The rest was for utilities. I also tithed ten percent of that check to my church. I have always strongly believed that is what God calls me to do as a Christian, and I believe it is what got me where I am today.

Eddie had one side of the room and I had another. I slept on a futon that had been the couch in our old livingroom. When I needed to have a private conversation, I went to the bathroom or the patio. That was as private as it got, but at least I didn’t have to worry about my calls being recorded.

Despite the cramped quarters and the small challenges that came with being self-supporting, that apartment represented the first home I ever lived in that was safe. I didn’t have to worry about coming home to someone’s mood swings, or drunken behavior, or anger. I hadn’t experienced that in many years, and I felt a brand-new freedom.

Eddie and I enjoyed, not just our basic needs, but a few wants as well. We had a chance to reconnect by ourselves before he went to high school, where girls and friends consumed his life. Eddie admitted to me later that he was actually glad I left my ex.

I eventually found work that got us off government assistance and into a two-bedroom apartment. For the first time in my life, I was fully self-supporting. Consequently, I grew in self-esteem.

Though my ex and I started dating again, I truly believe that the success of our relationship depended on my financial and physical need for him. At the end of the marriage, he told me, “You’re not the kind of wife I need. You’re an independent woman. I don’t need an independent woman. I need a wife.” By his own admission, he needed a dependent woman, which made reconciliation impossible.

I remember telling my new friend, Harry, I was never going to get married again. To me, marriage came to equal devastation and entrapment. I meant it, too. Harry and I had met in a support group, ironically, on what would have been my tenth wedding anniversary. I had purposed in my heart to make the best of that day.

Our relationship began with occasional phone conversations, mainly to support each other through the loss of our spouses. I didn't think of Harry in terms of anything more than a new friend. In fact, I never believed I'd be able to feel anything beyond friendship for anyone ever again; so it surprised me when I started to develop an attraction for him. I didn't think he could return the feelings because he was suffering from his own post-marital wounds. Besides, he told me that he had no plans on "doing the dating game" for at least a year. I did my best to hold my feelings in, and respect his wishes.

Needless to say, I could hardly believe it when he invited me to church on Christmas Eve. I realized that even if nothing came of this, it was nice to know I could feel something in my heart again.

In January of 2010, after he went to court for his final divorce proceedings, he invited me out for coffee. For the first time in what felt like years, I found myself laughing again. I thought Harry did quite well for someone who had just finished divorce proceedings.

Shortly after that coffee date, we admitted our mutual attraction for each other. Harry still needed some time to heal, so we took things very slowly. In hindsight, had we taken things as fast as I thought I was ready to, I probably would have been scared off. That had been my previous experience with dating after my divorce.

Through the following year of phone conversations and coffee/dinner dates, Harry and I developed a strong foundation of friendship. He was also very respectful of Eddie, which, of course, was vital to me. He wouldn’t even enter my apartment for several months, because he didn’t want to invade Eddie’s space. I thought that was a little extreme, but it was certainly better than the “bonding” tactics attempted by two men I dated briefly after the divorce. They tried to start conversations with Eddie, and get into his space too soon–big turnoff, by the way!

One day, a few months after we started dating, Eddie asked me: “Are you and Harry dating?”

I didn’t want to upset him, but I felt I owed him the truth. “Well…sorta. Yeah,” I answered.

“I’m fine with that,” he replied. “I like him and everything. Just do me a favor…tell him not to try and “bond” with me.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, because I knew exactly what he meant. The fact was, Eddie didn’t need another dad. He had his own dad and his grandfather. Harry was always respectful of that.

I didn’t ask Harry for rides anywhere, despite his constant invitation to call if I needed anything. Now I realize, as friendly as he is, he extends that to everyone. But I didn’t want this to be another blind-sighted relationship based on my dependence on him.

He has since told me that one of the first things that attracted him to me was that I, as a single, blind mother, could support my son and myself, with jobs from home. In fact, he prefers a woman who is strong.

Harry is gregarious, and enjoys lots of friends as I do. For the first time in years, I found I could introduce the man I loved to my friends without later hearing a litany of criticisms about them.

When I started to realize I could love this man, at the urging of a friend of mine who was a life coach, I began writing down what my expectations were for a relationship. In hindsight, this list was quite amusing. It started out with things I didn’t want, rather than things I wanted–things like “I want my phone calls private, and not taped, I want my emails private.” As I grew in my recovery, I could laugh at that list. I mean, let’s aim for the sky! How about “I want a man who won’t duct tape me to the bed and beat me.” All kidding aside, so much of my life had been violated that I had to figure out what I did want from a list of things I didn’t want.

On Saturday, July 16, 2011, Harry and I were married in the home of our pastor and his wife. We went to pre-marital counseling with the same pastor. No marriage is without its trials, but it was important for me to know how my partner handled them. Fortunately, we’ve been together long enough now that we’ve endured some painful and difficult times. The important thing is that we endure them together. I’m learning what it’s like to have my husband be my best friend, rather than my competitor.

Now, November 6, the date of what would have been my tenth wedding anniversary, has a whole new meaning. I no longer think of it as an anniversary of what would have or might have been, but the day I met my future husband. What a way to replace a trauma memory!

As for my stepson, Taylor, we still exchange emails once in a while, but I haven’t seen him in nearly two years. I still pray for him daily, and hope for a day we can reunite. I no longer have any contact with my ex at all, and much prefer it that way.

Today, my identity is not in the surviving of the abuse, but in the conquering. I look forward to waking up in the morning, and enjoying what life has to offer, not despite what I’ve been through, but because of it. Harry and I are both looking forward to a bright future and we thank God daily for bringing us together.

Bio: Nicole Bissett lives in La Mesa, CA, with her husband Harry. She holds a bachelors degree in journalism with a minor in English.

Her profile articles appear regularly in Today’s Vintage Magazine and the Insurance Journal. She has written for “The Jonestown Report,” and has been a volunteer transcriber for the Jonestown Institute. Several of her pieces appeared in “The Gratitude Book Project,” which became a number one Amazon best-seller in December, 2010. She also acts as a ghost-writer for Kevin Cole, a life coach who founded Empowerment Quest International.

Nicole can be reached at nicolebissett1969@gmail.com.

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The Stalker, fiction, Manny Colver

“I’m telling you, Albert…”

I paused and waited until he’d looked up from his plate and across the table at me, and I was certain that he wasn’t looking through me, wasn’t still focused on some hypothetical impossibility he’d been attacking that day at work but instead was looking at and thinking of me and only me.

Only then did I go on. “…he’s stalking me,” I said.

Albert’s eyes narrowed. I’d gotten his attention, and if his thought processes had by some miracle become audible, I would have heard that labored change of direction: a smooth high-pitched, earsplitting whir interrupted by the sudden clanking of chains, the screeching of belts or the grinding of metal upon metal, which in good time would have diminished to a fluttering hum born of pure irritation.

“I really doubt that,” he said.

“Really,” I said.

“We know how you are, Amelia,” he added, trying to draw me in as he usually did, to finagle from me something he could interpret as an admission, and hence, a confirmation of the way he saw things, which to him was really the only way things should, or maybe even could, be seen by a rational person, which, of course, I wasn’t. I was too emotional, you see.

I said nothing.

“Your active imagination?” he posited, plodding through his words with several nods.

“It’s not my imagination,” I insisted. He is stalking me, Albert.”

Albert lifted his chin and pursed his lips, considering.

What else could I say? What could I say that I hadn’t already said or conveyed countless times over the years with a grimace or sigh?

I waited.

Finally, he leaned back in his chair, put down his fork, placed his hands upon the table and looked at me squarely. I had, indeed, wrestled his attention away from work and, much to my surprise, had secured it to an extent well beyond any that I could recall having achieved for some considerable time. What sat before me now was a man fully engaged. And for the first time in a long time I hadn’t the slightest idea what to expect from him next.

I waited through a succession of looks that seemed to be building toward something. Then at last he raised one hand in the air and began to count on his fingers.

“The security guard at the bank?”

I groaned.

“Or the boy who bagged your groceries — until you got him fired with that peeping tom story?”

“Now just a minute, Albert. I never said they were stalking me. Those were entirely different circumstances. And besides, the way the hedge out front had been cut that week and the way the light from the street lamp came through in that one spot made it look just like the bagboy’s upper torso. It scared the daylights out of me.”

“Like the man in the bedroom?”

“Yes, like the man in the bedroom. For heaven’s sake, Albert, I’d just woken from a nightmare. The moon was full that night, the trees were almost bare, and the tangle of shadows there with the few leaves and the bare branches thrown through the window and over the chair where you’d dumped your clothes made it look like a crouching figure.”

“Don’t you see, Amelia? You have a tendency to personify everything. It’s a natural human propensity. You just tend to take it a bit too far. I’m not trying to criticize you. I’m just trying to help you to see — to –well — to better understand yourself.”

“Oh, yes, the hysterical, emotionally unstable woman,” I huffed. I sat back, crossed my arms and sniffed in derision. “Well, this is different,” I said.

“They always are, Amelia,” he said and he sounded tired. He even looked tired.

“Well. Don’t worry yourself one little bit, Albert. The next time he shows up, I’ve decided I’ll just go ahead and kill him.”

Now it was Albert who sighed and with a shrug said, “Well, good luck.” Then without another word or even a second glance my way he returned to his dinner and probably his work as well for when I brought out dessert, I could almost hear that high-pitched earsplitting whir.

“Good luck, indeed,” I muttered.

I didn’t see my stalker for several days after that most disappointing response from Albert, but just as I was about to give his take on things some serious consideration and by implication engage in a bit of psychoanalysis upon myself, my stalker appeared one last time, and I say “one last time” here, because upon that occasion, having prepared myself in advance, I dispatched his soul off to rejoin the great universal life force and did so with a single well-placed blow from a ten pound sledge hammer, which I had ordered from amazon.com and for which I’d gotten free two-day shipping. I didn’t even have to pay sales tax.

“I have some exciting news,” I told Albert that night at dinner.

He had just plucked a tiny piece of pimento from his baked beans with his salad fork and was busy examining the morsel with his usual consternation. Albert didn’t like pimentos and I was always putting them in his food just to see if he found them. Mostly he didn’t but tonight he did.

“I’m happy to report that he’s dead,” I announced.

Albert did a change of focus over the end of his fork replacing the odious pimento with my smiling face. “Who’s dead?”

“My stalker,” I chirped.

What a reaction! I had never seen Albert’s face grow so dark so quickly, and I thought for a moment that he might explode, that tiny gushers of boiling blood might shoot out of his reddened face at any moment.

“Dead?” he erupted, rather loudly.

“Yes, dead,” I said calmly. “I hit him with a sledge hammer.”

“You what?” came still louder.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Albert, don’t be dense. I’ve told you what I did and I’m not going to tell you again.”

He rose from the table, fists clenched, as menacing as I’d ever seen him. Then he almost screamed at me: “My God, Amelia! Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Of course I do,” I answered.

“Where is he? What did you do with the body?”

“He’s laying on his back in the doorway between the laundry room and the garage. Strangest looking insect I’ve ever seen,” I added, though Albert was long gone by then, took off like a rocket as soon as he heard “laundry room,” his footfalls thundering down the hallway.

Anyway, it was a very strange looking thing, reminded me somewhat of those huge, creepy palmetto bugs you see in Florida, large and ugly for sure.

Well, you would have thought I’d slashed the Mona Lisa to ribbons for all the commotion that followed: cars screeching into the driveway, men in lab coats, business suits, even a man in a military uniform raced through the foyer, past the dining room where I sat finishing my meal and some of Albert’s while I caught words like “prototype” and “maiden voyage,” and listened to a few snippets of conversation float in from the other end of the house:

“…another leg over here in the …”

“…half-life of several …”

“…transmitters supposed to survive even if…”

“…nano guys here to assess the…”

Then I heard Albert’s voice rise above the rest. He was screaming again. “Survive? Survive hell! She hit it with a damned sledgehammer!”

Yes, I certainly did.

Well, all things present soon are past and the incident melted into the landscape of our marriage in the same way a tree falls, rots in the woods and soon enough joins the soil from which another tree sprouts, grows, stands for a time only to fall and rot again. That’s life. But I had the moral high ground and Albert knew it. Little was said about the incident for months. Then one night over a dinner that held no hidden pimentos, I asked him.

“Why did you choose me for operation maiden voyage? How could you do that, Albert?”

This time he surfaced quickly. I think he’d been expecting the question and when it came, he was ready. “I’m sorry for that,” he said without looking up at me. “I had a lot on my plate at the time–constraints and so on. A lot of rush, rush and all of that.”

Then just as quickly he was gone again, back inside himself. I didn’t try to draw him out again; after all, he was happy in there and I’d always known that. But now I knew something else: he was happy in there regardless of what that might mean for the rest of us out here. And sometimes, like the play of light and shadow on some clothing draped upon a chair, that discovery is enough to scare me half to death.

Bio: Born with a rare eye condition that left him with 10% of normal vision, an extreme sensitivity to light and no color perception whatsoever, Manny Colver’s life began when someone handed him a pair of sunglasses. And so began life’s ride: an undergraduate degree in communications, a masters degree in business finance, thirty years of a wonderful marriage and a career path that has staggered through an odd assortment of gainful employments: college teacher, yellow bug bulb phone salesman, assistant production manager on a gaud-awful low budget horror film to pick just a few from more than a dozen.

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When a New Day Dawns, memoir, Terri Winaught

“What am I doing here?” I screamed inwardly as I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

As I pondered my 10-week pregnancy, I wondered how it had come to this. When I found out I was pregnant, I was scared, but also happy. Once I told the baby’s father, though, I felt like storm clouds of anger had smacked the sun until it hid like a scared child.

“Are you saying it’s mine?” Barnie screamed accusingly into the phone.

“How dare you!” I snarled back. “Since you were the only one I was with, who else’s baby would it be”?”

“You’re just selfish, that’s what you are: absolutely selfish! You got pregnant on purpose just because you wanted to have a baby. I hope you’re going to get an abortion,” Barnie concluded.

“No! I don’t believe in abortion! I’m not having an abortion!” I responded.

When I could take the back-and-forth bickering no longer, I hung up and cried myself into a fitful sleep.

During the next three weeks, I sought support from people I thought were my friends, only to have them say, “Barnie’s right. You are being selfish. It’s not a baby yet anyway. It’s just tissues and cells.”

“Terri,” the counselor startled me as she cheerfully called my name. I stood up nervously, arcing my mobility cane back and forth as I walked toward the friendly-sounding woman.

“Do you want to take my arm?” the counselor asked kindly. Though I used my cane, I also walked sighted guide in the interest of finding the counselor’s office more easily.

“I really don’t want this abortion,” I blurted out immediately. “I’m only having it because I told Barnie that I didn’t want to be selfish, and if having an abortion meant being unselfish, then that’s what I would do. I was hoping beyond hope that he would say, ‘Well, since I can tell how much you really don’t want to do this, I won’t pressure you even though I wish you would have an abortion,’ but all Barnie said was, ‘okay.’ So now I feel obligated to have it.”

I was so upset by feeling so trapped that I already had a slight fever and kept pacing back and forth to the bathroom.

After three hours of discussing options, lamenting, wavering, and being told that I didn’t have to have an abortion, I finally did what I had allowed myself to be pressured into.

I was on the verge of tears as my stomach cramped in excruciating pain. Seeing my distress, the counselor who held my hand told me that it was okay to cry, but I knew better. “If I cry,” I wanted to say, I will start screaming, “Stop! What are you doing? You’re killing my baby! Please don’t kill my baby!”

As the process dragged on like some bad horror film, I felt like a pumpkin being scraped of its pulp and seeds until there was nothing left.

For several weeks afterward, I felt relieved, not because I was happy with what I’d done, but because I was glad that I’d finally done something rather than keep going back and forth like a broken clock that forgot how to tell time.

When guilt began to replace relief, however, I felt like quicksand was pulling me down to murky depths from which I’d never arise.

Though I somehow functioned well enough to work full-time and attend graduate school, my nights were hellish beyond Scrooge’s Ghost of Christmas Future. Over and over, night after night, I heard babies crying endlessly and calling for a mommy who never answered. I heard the vacuum-like sound of the suction machine, and my voice, echoing through the darkness, its condemnation in duplicate and triplicate, “You’re a murderer and a whore! A murderer and a whore! A whore! A whore!” When I could no longer stand the surround sound siege, I downed several valium. Ah, sweet valium! It dissolved the horrific sounds into silence and sleep.

I tried committing suicide, but gestures didn’t help. I went to therapy, but that helped only a little. Barnie offered an apology of sorts by saying, four months after the fact, “I’m not proud of how I behaved,” but that was little consolation.

I had my first admission to a world-renowned psychiatric hospital, but the only insight I gained was learning what staff wanted to hear and saying it so I could get the hell out.

I gave birth to two children, but I was soon rubbed raw by grief again. My daughter was taken away from me and my rights terminated because of allegations of molestation committed by someone I trusted and loved enough to have his child. As a single parent who felt too overwhelmed to care for two children, given my combination of recurring ulcers and even more frequent psychiatric hospitalizations, I relinquished my son for adoption.

What finally helped was a post-abortion ministry called Rachel’s Vineyard, and the Memorial Mass I had for what I am sure was a little girl, 20 years to the day.

“Have mercy, Lord, cleanse me from all my sins,” I intoned as I invited those present to sing the refrain. Seeking forgiveness through song and Scripture, lighting the darkness with a candle and feeling God’s love through Liturgy were the healers I needed; the healers I had longed for; the healers I had cried for; the healers that turned darkness to day and showed me that life could go on after abortion and be worth living.

As I reflected on hell turned into healing, and a guilty soul set free, I found myself writing:

I’m finally feeling better;
Most of the pain is gone.
I feel a sense of hope renewed
That harsh judgment is done.

I know I’m feeling better!
I’m sure I can go on!
This must be what it feels like
When a new day dawns.

Bio: Terri Winaught was born in Philadelphia and moved to Pittsburgh to attend college. She graduated in 1976 with a B.S. in Secondary Education.

In 1979, Terri received her Masters Degree in Education from Duquesne University with a specialization in counseling.

She currently works at a mental-health organization where she takes calls from a confidential toll-free number, and is assistant supervisor and director of training.

Terri writes a weekly column for the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind; contributes to her workplace newsletter; writes a monthly newsletter for an organization called BOLD (Blind Outdoor Leisure Development), and is a freelance writer for firstclasswriters.com.

Contact her at songbird1953@access995.com or tmariew313@gmail.com.

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Don’t Litter, fiction, Sharon King-Booker

Ginger regained consciousness slowly. Two of her cats were standing on her chest, nuzzling her face and patting her with their paws. She pushed them away gently and slowly sat up. She felt the place on the side of her head. It was already beginning to swell and she could feel it throb with each heartbeat. She was surprised that the blow had been hard enough to make her lose consciousness but thankful it hadn’t ended up being fatal. The heavy-duty flashlight lay on the floor. She’d always heard those things could be used as weapons, and now she knew it.

She glanced around the room; her husband, George, lay back in his recliner. His feet were up and his head back as if he were sleeping. Only the dime-sized hole in the center of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, indicated that this was a sleep from which he was not going to awaken. There was very little blood evident, but Ginger knew that were she to lean him forward, the back of his head would tell an entirely different story. She rose slowly to her feet, steadying herself as the room began to spin crazily around her. She touched the lump, now the size of an orange, on the side of her head and winced. After the room settled down, she made her way painfully to the phone.

The bored voice which initially answered the 911 call sharpened as the man listened to Ginger’s incoherent explanation of what had happened. “I’ve got officers on their way now,” he assured her. “Try to keep calm and please stay with me until they arrive.”

A police car, siren screaming and red lights flashing, slid to a stop in front of her house. “Okay,” she told the 911 operator, “they’re here, thank you.” She replaced the receiver on its cradle and began sobbing hysterically as she turned to face the two officers coming through the front door with their guns drawn.

“What’s this all about, Mrs. Carson?” the taller, younger of the two officers asked, trying to look in all directions at once. Then he suddenly stopped as he caught sight of George Carson seemingly peacefully sleeping. He put away his gun and checked the body briefly while his partner conducted a quick search through the house.

“We never lock our doors,” Ginger gulped, trying to control her sobs, “That’s why we moved here. Nothing bad is supposed to happen in a small town.” She collapsed on the couch. “We were just sitting here watching television when these two masked men burst through the front door.”

Between sobs, she watched as the older officer returned from his search, holstered his gun, talked briefly to the other man then came to sit beside her, absently brushing aside the several cats already gathered there. “Can you give me any kind of a description?” He asked, pulling a notebook and pen from his pocket. The first officer left through the front door to radio in a report.

Ginger tried to shake her head then grimaced at the pain as she looked imploringly at him. “Not really,” she said. “It all happened so fast. I jumped up to confront them and one of them hit me on the head with something very hard. After that, I didn’t know anything until I came to and saw they had killed George. Once again she broke into hysterical weeping, at the same time cuddling the large grey tabby cat that had jumped into her lap.

“Do you think you could look around and tell us if anything is missing?” the younger officer asked from the doorway, brushing at his dark blue uniform pants where several cats had been winding themselves about his legs.

“I’ll try,” Ginger said, getting shakily to her feet and preceding the two men out of the living room.

In the bedroom, drawers had been pulled from the dresser and chest of drawers and dumped on the floor. Clothes, pulled from hangers in the closet, lay in disordered heaps. Her large jewelry armoire stood with doors open, drawers pulled out and a jumble of bracelets, chains and rings had been thrown on the bed.

Ginger began looking through the items of jewelry and turned to the two waiting officers with eyes wide and tears once more streaming down her face. “Oh yes,” she wailed. “My emerald bracelet and necklace that George just bought me for our anniversary are missing!”

The officers exchanged a look. They wondered how she knew anything was missing in the jumble of jewelry lying there. To their unskilled eyes, most of what lay on the bed was no more than fairly good costume jewelry. “Did you have those valuable items insured?” the older policeman asked, watching as two fairly young kittens leaped onto the bed and began playing with the tangled chains.

Ginger had lowered herself to the side of the bed and now looked up imploringly. “Er… um… I didn’t get your names,” she began and absently picked up a bracelet and dangled it for the kittens to play with. “I think they were insured,” she said, brushing a tear from her cheek. “But George was such a procrastinator. You know, I really don’t know for sure.” Saying that, she stood up and again led the officers back to the living room.

“I’m Officer Anders,” the older of the two men said. “This is my partner, Officer White. The crime lab people and medical examiner are on their way so we will just wait with you until they get here. Can I get anything for you?”

Ginger seated herself once again on the couch where she was immediately surrounded by a number of cats. “My head is really throbbing. May I fix an ice pack?”

“Of course, just be careful what you touch in there, the lab guys are awfully grumpy about such things!” White smiled at her in an effort to make her feel better.

Ginger busied herself with ice and towel in the kitchen while the two officers made a second circuit of the house, this time together. “The intruders must have known what they were looking for,” White commented to his partner as they re-entered the living room and opened the door for the Medical Examiner and crime lab personnel.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because only the bedroom was ransacked,” White replied as he motioned to the Medical Examiner and directed his attention to the body. “The lady says intruders came in and knocked her unconscious and then killed her husband,” he explained as the Medical Examiner looked over the situation.

“Any way to verify that?” The Examiner asked, looking around the cluttered room with critical eyes.

“She’s got a knot on her head. There’s no denying that,” White said and glanced toward the kitchen where they had heard the sound of the refrigerator door slamming shut.

A moment later Ginger re-entered the room holding a plastic bag filled with ice wrapped in a towel to the side of her head. Again she seated herself on the couch where she was surrounded by cats. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, officers,” she said. “It all happened so fast but I did see the two men were wearing gloves as well as their stocking masks.”

“What about size?” Anders asked. “Were they short, tall, fat, thin?”

Ginger again began to cry softly, stroking a lean Siamese that was rubbing insistently against her legs. “As I said, it was all so fast… but… I think the one who hit me was short and kind of fat. It was all so quick… and… poor George!” She wailed.

“So you don’t know if they shot your husband immediately after hitting you? Is that right?” The medical examiner queried.

Ginger shook her head carefully and winced at the pain that accompanied her action. “I’m afraid George was napping as he usually does when we are watching television,” she explained. “He probably didn’t even have a chance to react.”

White and Anders exchanged glances. “Then I wonder why they felt it necessary to kill him,” Anders wondered aloud.

“Well, I suppose he woke up and demanded to know what was happening,” Ginger offered and accepted the tissue White handed her from the box on the end table at the side of the couch. She blew her nose noisily and once again began to sob. “George is… was… very protective of our home and our things. Maybe they were… er… afraid.” her voice trailed off and she looked up at the two officers.

“He does look startled,” White said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “I understand how it is when you come suddenly awake from a doze. I sometimes fall asleep watching television too.” He looked appreciatively at the bare leg showing outside her robe. He felt sorry for this lovely young woman who had obviously suffered both severe physical and emotional trauma. Her eyes were so beautiful, even puffy from the crying, and as soon as the swelling went down on her head… It might be worth coming back when he was off duty, maybe offer to help her clean up… if only she wasn’t surrounded by all those damned cats! On second thought, that litter box in the utility room had almost made him sick.

After what seemed like ages to Ginger, the lab people and Medical Examiner had completed their work and left with her husband’s body on a stretcher. She shuddered at the gore that was left where the bullet had exited the back of George’s head. “May I wipe that up?” she asked the two officers who remained. They were still involved with trying gently but firmly to remove the various cats attempting to sit on their laps or climb their pant legs. “The cats… er… you know,” Ginger tried to explain. “If you have all the evidence you need, that is.”

Both policemen were in a hurry to leave. “It will be okay,” White said, brushing at the cat hair clinging to his uniform. “Some detectives will probably call or come by tomorrow, but it looks like you are just another victim of the break-ins that have been happening around here lately. Up until now no one has been home and I’m so sorry you and your husband had to be the victims of such violence. You can tell the detectives about the insurance and whatever else you remember.”

“Thank you, you’ll excuse me if I don’t see you to the door?” She stroked a huge black cat with one hand, and adjusted her ice pack with the other. “I will definitely keep my doors locked from now on though and I’ll try to be able to answer all their questions tomorrow.”

After the policemen had left, Ginger got a basin of soapy water and began scrubbing George’s recliner with a brush, the water getting first pink then red as she worked. “This will have to go,” she told the cats. “I never could stand this clumsy old thing anyway.”

She’d heard stories about the police inefficiency in this “hole in the wall” town George chose for them. Their search, their questions? They didn’t even ask her what show they were watching to figure out the timing. In all the crime novels and television shows she would have been at the police station or at the hospital half the night.

She returned to the couch and took a big ginger tabby cat onto her lap. Stroking her along with the several other cats gathered around, she asked, “Did George really think when he gave me that necklace and bracelet as compensation for getting rid of you darling kitties that I would agree?” She rubbed her chin on the head of a beautiful long-haired white cat who had replaced the ginger tabby on her lap. “Then tonight when George actually had the nerve to tell me it was either him or you darling kitties that had to go, just which choice did he really think I would make?”

“Tomorrow we’ll take that bucket of dirty litter out to the garbage, darlings. It will be just another bucket, along with the other buckets of litter hauled to the landfill and no one will ever find the gun and jewelry or be able to prove anything. Maybe I’ll even throw in that awful flashlight. What if I’d given myself a concussion?” She sighed contentedly, slipped off her shoes and lay back in the midst of her furry family. “With the insurance money and in our new location you can each have your own litter box.”

Bio: Sharon King-Booker has been totally blind since 1973. She began writing when she was in the third grade and has been writing ever since. She is a published author. She writes a “Mew Interpretation” for her local cat rescue group once a week in her local paper. She also writes music and sings in her church choir. Her first passion is cats. She has nine.

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In the Dew of Little Things, fiction, Elisa Busch

Rosalie picked up the laundry and slammed the door. Air drove through her with its soft caress as she dragged herself forward to the line. She pulled a pair of his pants from the basket, clipped clothespins in each corner and jammed them on.

The pants blew back and forth like waves. “Knock them into the dirt,” her mind shouted, “rip them apart, seam by seam.” But then who would have to wash them, mend them, or go shopping to buy a new pair?

Rosalie grabbed a shirt. It was yellow, six bright buttons, small pockets, soft. She remembered undoing those buttons, one by one in his office at the university, just two years ago. How they lay on the floor, thumping gently to the rhythm of their song: “Maybe I’m Amazed,” growing faster and faster with the increase of passion.

Now shock wrenched her body, the shirt fell back into the basket at the remembrance and Rosalie fled–not in the direction of the grunting pigs, not by the irritating nuzzle of cows, not by the rows and rows of mocking healthy vegetables, but deep into the woods to a spot without cars, without planes. In fact, it took her so long to find the rock, the backs and fronts of her legs ached.

Then sunlight gripped her face in its hands and held on. “But I want someone to talk to about ‘The Secret Life of Bees’,” she cried, “I want to sing and learn Italian.”

“Okay,” the voice inside her was matter-of-fact, but Rosalie stomped her foot. Impossible, on this isolated farm, impossible with this stranger-man who came in from the garden, sweat pouring from his lips, his body drooping in front of the TV for supper and silence.

The rock was long and wide and Rosalie lay down, staring into the distance. Clumps of dirt surrounded her. He could make something grow even here. But what could she find or build?

She closed her eyes. At the farm, nighttime was filled with the rustle of sheets, the snores and thrashing about, worse than the occasional fly that now landed on her forehead. She drifted into half slumber, feeling cozy, protected by stillness. Should she leave? The question jolted her upright. Brenda would let her stay in the condo till she found a teaching job and got her own place. For a moment, Rosalie’s heart quickened. She imagined a student with long blonde hair and sharp eyes accustomed to scorn. She saw these eyes flare with insight about women and honey and why someone has to die in this novel. For a moment, she heard her voice with the children singing, “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” in Sunday school. Then one tear at a time rolled down her cheek, landed on her hand, her chin, her neck. They were large like raindrops.

If she left, he would spin around the house like a lost penny, calling, “Rosalie, Rosa Lie. Rosy?” sob, “But I love you, you love me.” And it was true, she did: loved the way he held her hand, his fingers buttery from microwave popcorn, sometimes, moist from milking. She loved his hoarse whispers at night even when they spoke of newborn calves. She loved … it seemed that her whole being was alive with her love for him.

But hour after hour he was gone and she was not the kind of person to knead bread, can tomatoes, get dirty feeding pigs. He knew she hated being a farmer’s wife and yet his dream took off, dragged her along. Rosalie’s dream was far away, crushed like the corsage he gave her at the prom that came unpinned and their friends Drew and Deidre danced upon.

Bits of seeds blew toward her, interrupting. What kind were they? She had no idea, but she rose and took one, dug in the ground and planted it.

“Is that your loneliness seed?” he asked from behind her. She turned, saw his blue shirt smudged with yellow. “I looked everywhere,” he said. The troubled expression on his face surprised her. Did he understand how bereft she was? They stayed quiet.

Then she motioned to the rock and they sat.

“I saw ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ on the night table,” he said, “Have you finished it yet?”

“No. But I think August is going to die–someone is going to die and it tears my heart.”

“You’re not going to die, are you?” He placed his hand on her cheek, stroked it, put his other hand on her other cheek, stroked. One hand went up while the other slid down. “What are you doing?” she smiled.

“Playing.” She thought he wanted to make love and sighed. “No,” he said, “I’m pretending that I can read your mind through your face. One part says yes and the other no.”

“Don’t you have to plow?” she tried to shrink into herself.

“Not today.”

“It’s not Sunday.”

“Everything can wait.”

“But …” Her sentence trailed off, winding through the trees.

“You’re afraid to be close, to bare yourself to a man who …”

“I chose to come with you,” she said, “now I have to find my path.”

“But can’t I help you?”

“I don’t know.” They sat there, holding hands. She saw he was bleeding too. But her mind craved, ached, agonized for–and all of a sudden, she knew what it was–what she wanted more than teaching, more than singing: She wanted more than holding hands with her lover. “What should I do with this new life,” she prayed, “I don’t like it. I don’t want it, but you gave it to me. What …” The sun made a circle on his head beside her, rubbing his bald spot. He must have forgotten his hat. She stretched and kissed it. Then the light touched every bump and crevice of her hair too.

“Can we go swimming in the lake,” she asked.

“Are you sure? I want to please you,” he answered, “it’s not from guilt either. I don’t want you to dwindle.”

“I am fine,” she answered, “at least for now.”

“Okay, I’ll race you then,” he cried and jumped up. She joined him and they stood still for a moment, then Rosalie and Bud ran, ran through the woods, past the pigs, the cows, and the overflowing clothes basket, ran toward the water.

Bio: Elisa Busch writes fiction, poetry, children’s stories, memoir and songs. A CD of her compositions should be available soon.

She won an online science fiction short story contest with her story, “Twelve Hours,” and has had a poem, “Common Dusk,” published in a magazine for disabled individuals called, “A Joyful Noise.” She is totally blind. Elisa has also published articles in church newsletters.

She published articles about the “Behind Our Eyes” group in “Our Special” magazine and “The Braille Forum while she was the group’s secretary.”

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The Eyes Behind the Glass, fiction, Mary-Jo Lord

As I stood facing the wood framed mirror, I smiled, grateful that the eyes behind the glass were mine. Suddenly, the mirror filled with the images of other faces, other eyes. I turned away, and shut my eyes tight against the onslaught of mental images. “They’re only memories,” I told myself. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes and turned back to the mirror. The faces were gone, and once again the eyes reflected in the polished glass were my own.

I applied my makeup and thought about my plans for the weekend. I searched through my drawer for just the right shade of lipstick, I opened one tube and then another.

Suddenly, I froze. Again the mirror was clouded with an image other than my own. But this time, there was only one face, one set of eyes. It was her face, her eyes. My hand that held the lipstick tube was shaking. It was her shade; “Fire Side Wine.” I remembered the first time that I saw it, bright red on the white collar of Stephen’s shirt. That had been the beginning and the end of everything.

Of course, I confronted him about it, but he laughed and told me it was my lipstick.

“Don’t you remember? You wore it to the party the other night.” I was used to forgetting things from time to time, but I think I would have remembered going to a party. And certainly, I would never buy that shade of lipstick.

I thought about pursuing the matter further, but what would be the point? I couldn’t remember going to the party, but I couldn’t remember not going.

The more I thought about it, I had felt funny one morning recently. I felt disjointed or groggy, as if I had been drugged. And there had been an annoying high-pitched whistling in my left ear. When I reached up to scratch it, my nail hit something. I pulled out a hard, smooth piece of metal. It was an old hearing aid. Where had it come from? I vaguely remembered that my parents made me use one as a child, but I thought I had thrown it out years ago. Who found it, and how had it ended up in my ear?

Several weeks passed, and I almost forgot about the lipstick and hearing aid incident, when Stephen popped a Bruce Springsteen CD in the car stereo. I hated that music and Stephen knew it.

“Where did you get that?”

“I bought it for you. Last night you said that we didn’t have anything by Springsteen.”

“I might have mentioned that, but you know I hate that kind of music.”

“There’s no pleasing you!” He punched the eject button. The disk flew out of the disk player and spun and danced like a large tiddly-wink before landing with a thud in my footwell. We didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

That night, I saw them together. They were making love in our room, in our bed! In horror, I watched him hold her and kiss her, the same way that he had held and kissed me for the past year. I could see and hear them as if they were actors in a play, and I was in the audience. But it was more than that. I felt a connectedness with her that I couldn’t understand. Who was she? I was sure I had seen her somewhere before? I felt so close to them, yet so far away. I screamed for them to stop, but they didn’t seem to hear. I tried to burst into the bedroom but I couldn’t move.

At some point, I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew, it was morning, and I was in our bed. Stephen was in the kitchen making coffee. My head was splitting, and I had that same groggy feeling that I experienced before, accompanied with that annoying whistling sound. Without thinking, I removed the hearing aid from my left ear. Had Stephen put it there?

I got up and staggered toward the shower, avoiding the mirror because I was sure I looked awful. I knew I had to say something to Stephen about last night, but what? I wasn’t sure what I saw, or if any of it was real. I had just about convinced myself not to say anything when I saw a lipstick on the counter near the sink. I opened the tube and shrieked in horror! It was that shade of red that I had seen on Stephen’s collar a few weeks ago, and the one that I saw on her lips last night. I forced myself to look at the label. It was “Fire Side Wine.” I let out a blood curdling scream, and dropped the lipstick like a stick of dynamite.

“What the hell…” Stephen was standing in the hall near the bathroom.

“You tell me! What the hell! No, who the hell…” My voice was shaking, and I was breaking out in a cold sweat. I felt dizzy, as if I were going to faint. My heart was pounding, and I was losing control of my body.

The next thing I knew, it was hours later, and Stephen acted as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The lipstick was gone from the bathroom sink. I decided to talk to him again. “You’re crazy,” he had said irritably. “But if you are going to accuse me of sleeping with another woman, then maybe I should.”

A few weeks later, Stephen moved out. He said I drove him away with my mood swings and crazy accusations. But they weren’t accusations, and I wasn’t crazy. I had seen them together, and her lipstick was in our bathroom the next morning.

Although I didn’t want to admit it, I missed Stephen. I wanted to call him, but I couldn’t. I was afraid she would answer the phone, and that would have been too much to take. But apparently he wasn’t seeing or talking to her either because she started leaving me notes. At first she was leaving them at work. I had accused my friends of writing them, but I could tell by the looks on their faces that they didn’t have a clue about where the notes had come from.

I got scared when I started finding them at my house. They would be on the kitchen table, on the dresser, and in the bathroom. They were short notes. One said, “You ruined everything for me, and now I want to get even.” Another said, “You think that Stephen loved you. It was me that he wanted all along. He used you to get to me.” Then I started receiving email messages from Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. One message simply stated, “I know everything about you.” How was she getting in my house? Where did she get my email address? I always locked the doors and shut the windows at night and whenever I left the house.

I thought about calling the police, but what would I say? “Hello, someone has been breaking into my house and leaving notes?? They would think I was crazy. It sounded crazy to me.

I had started seeing images and hearing voices of women and children. I began to avoid looking in mirrors because I never knew what I would see. More often than not, if I did look, I would see someone that didn’t look like me, or the mirror would be filled with distorted images of women and children.

I’d just about decided I was crazy, when a co-worker suggested that I take the notes to a hand-writing expert. She examined all of the notes carefully, along with several samples of my writing. She told me that without a doubt, all of the notes had been written by the same person. She also stated matter-of-factly that in comparing my writing with the writing on the notes, there were few, if any, similarities. I didn’t know if I should feel frustrated or relieved.

The voices, visual images, and time lapses persisted, so I decided to find a therapist. I went to several before I found Sandy. She was the only one that didn’t make me feel uncomfortable or try to medicate or hospitalize me. I was making progress, and started to trust Sandy when she gave me her diagnosis. I didn’t agree with her, so I stopped going to see her. The notes and emails had stopped months ago, so to me the problem was resolved.

Several months passed, and I felt as if my life was getting back on track. I lost my job, and got another. Stephen filed for a divorce, and while it was upsetting, it had been expected. Of course, the turmoil inside my head over the divorce had been incredible. The notes and email messages began to appear again, but I decided that the best way to handle an unwelcome intruder was to ignore her. “You’ll get yours,” the last note said, and then I didn’t hear from her again.

My new job was going well, and Mike, a co-worker, asked me out. I was so excited. I still loved and missed Stephen, but it was time for me to move on.

I expected interference from her, but I didn’t see or hear her. Finally, it was over!

I awoke late. The bright sun forced its way through the thick drapes. Drapes? Where was I? It was happening again. I felt as if I was waking up from a drug overdose, and there was that all too familiar whistling. Instinctively, I removed the hearing aid from my left ear. Why was I wearing it? I couldn’t blame Stephen this time. And where was I? I looked at the night table, wall unit, and desk. They looked so commercial, so motel-like. That was it. I was in a motel room somewhere. I staggered over to the desk and looked at the phone book. The front cover said “Corbin, Kentucky.” But what was I doing there? I looked around the room for my belongings, but didn’t find much, just a change of clothing, and some toiletries. I noticed an empty whiskey bottle in the garbage, and the ice bucket was half full of cool water. “Well, that explains the groggy feeling,” I thought. If I drank that whole fifth, I was experiencing a massive hangover. Did I drink it? I hated liquor. And what day was it? My cell phone said it was Saturday, September 18. I had lost track of time for over twenty-four hours. I missed work and my date with Mike.

I left the motel, and thankfully, my own car was in the parking lot. I noticed a printout from MapQuest on the passenger’s seat. The route from near my home in Michigan to Miami, Florida was highlighted.

I glanced at the CD in the stereo. It was Bruce Springsteen. “Born To Run.” I laughed hysterically at the irony of the whole thing. I had no idea what I had been running from, but I knew what and who I was running to. I had to get back to Michigan and back into therapy with Sandy. That is if she would still see me.

That was six and a half years ago. Six and a half years, nine jobs, and five hundred and some odd therapy sessions later I had a diagnosis. My first, and one of my most difficult steps, was accepting Sandy’s diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. The Bruce Springsteen fan and owner of the hearing aid and red lipstick was Megan, one of my alter identities. She was created during a loud explosion, and had a fifty percent hearing loss in her left ear. She loved bright colors and wild hairdos. And she liked to get drunk once in a while.

Sandy helped me work through all of our memories, and integrated us into one personality. As odd as it sounds, I miss them sometimes. I can’t check out and let someone else take over any more. When I’m in a difficult situation, I have to face it on my own. They aren’t there to help or protect me anymore. They can’t sabotage me either.

As for Stephen, he is engaged and will be married next month. I miss him, but I know we could never have what we had before. Too much has happened, and I’m not the same person, or persons, that I was then. I’m a combination of all of us.

This morning at the mirror I felt overwhelmed for a moment. Reliving my past was exhausting, but it made me realize just how far I had come. Now it was time to put the past away for a while and get back to the present. I glanced at my watch. An hour had passed. I was going to be late, but at least I knew where the time had gone. I was still holding Megan’s lipstick. I tossed it in the garbage, and then retrieved it. Maybe someday I would want to wear it.

I applied another shade, and surveyed myself critically. I smiled as I took one last look, again grateful that the only eyes looking back at me were my own.

Bio: Mary-Jo Lord has a masters’ degree in counseling from Oakland University, and has worked at Oakland Community College for nineteen years. She writes poetry, fiction, and memoirs. A section of her work is published in a Plain View Press anthology called “Almost Touching.” She lives with her husband and son in Rochester, Michigan. She has been blind since birth.

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II. WRITERS’ CLIMB

“You Finish It” Contest

Here’s an interesting twist on competition among contributors. Finish this “cliffhanger” by Valerie Moreno, and we might choose your ending for publication in Magnets and Ladders Spring/Summer 2012–2500 words max, much shorter is much better. Submit as soon as you like. No decision will be made until after the submission deadline, February 15, 2012. A panel of judges and the story’s original author will decide the winner. Close competitors may be announced.

Did Marybeth get hurt? Did Bobby rush in and save the day? Did the intruder evaporate? Come on, you can be more creative than that if you dare!

Another Chance
by Valerie Moreno

Bobby’s hands trembled as he set a tray with fruit, coffee and buttered toast on the wobbly end table. “I didn’t put jam on your toast, Marybeth.” His voice was strained as he gazed at his wife. Slumped in the bentwood rocker, Marybeth didn’t raise her sorrowful blue eyes to Bobby or the breakfast tray he’d brought for her.

“I didn’t know if you wanted any,” Bobby tried again.

It’s ok,” the girl spoke so softly Bobby had to lean down to hear her. “I’m not hungry.”

Bobby sighed heavily, running a shaky hand through his neat platinum hair.

“Mare, you can’t go on like this…not eating, not sleeping. It’s that nightmare again. It’s a dream, Marybeth, nothing else.”

He stared at the sullen girl huddled in the chair, hands folded in her lap. Her blonde hair was uncombed, limp and dirty on her shoulders.

“You just don’t understand, Bobby.” She began to sob, her voice full of agony. “It’s more than a dream or a nightmare. It feels like some kind of premonition or warning.”

In the kitchen, unnoticed by the couple in the living room, a plump figure silently pushed the unlocked door ajar and quietly slipped inside. She had short curly hair the color of old tomatoes and wore no shoes. Her faded house dress had a large pocket where she clutched the handle of a razor wrapped in a thick washcloth.

From her utility room window, she’d studied the young couple’s goings and comings, a dislike for the skinny, sullen girl budding in her mind. She acted as though she was a moody prima donna, worrying the sweet, conscientious man who was, in her estimation, the perfect husband. She’d welcomed the newlyweds to the neighborhood a month earlier with a coconut pie and freshly cut roses from her garden. She stood motionless now, listening to the wife’s angry protest.

“It’s not just a dream, Bobby,” she cried. “It’s with me every moment of the day. I don’t know how to make you see that. I’ve dreamed it over and over and it never changes. I’m saying goodbye to you–you’re leaving for work–and, when I turn around, there’s a figure in the kitchen doorway. It’s a woman, but I can’t see her face, just a strange orange halo around her head from the sun hitting her and I know she’s going to hurt me. I feel it. She’s evil and it’s real!”

Bobby slipped his arms around his wife and planted a gentle peck on her cheek. “Well,” he sighed turning away, “Of course I do have to go to work now.” He picked up his keys and briefcase, and started toward the living room door. “Call me every hour if you get scared. Maybe tonight we can talk about getting you some counseling or something to help you sleep through those bad dreams.” Then he was out the door.

Marybeth slowly rose to her feet and gathered the dishes containing her uneaten food for a trip to the sink. As soon as she entered the kitchen she froze. It was just like she’d told Bobby, but this time the woman hadn’t dashed away!

Marybeth screamed! She brought the dishes up to cover her face as if to ward off a blow. She didn’t want to see that awful woman any more. “Go away!” she sobbed, “Whoever you are, go away! You are not just in my mind! You’re real!”

Bio: Valerie Moreno, age 56, has been writing since she was twelve years old. Always inspired by music and fascinated by people around her, she’s written fiction, memoir, poetry and articles.

Publishing credits include many articles, stories and poems in “The Troubadour,” newsletter/magazine of the Secular Franciscan Order, “The Answer,” newsletter of DIAL, “Dialogue,” “Matilda Ziegler,” and the “Dot-to-Dot” Magazine of The Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait. Several stories and poems appeared in “Behind Our Eyes,” an Anthology of twenty-seven writers with Disabilities, and a poem appeared in the e-book “Fans in the Mirror,” published by the Michael Jackson Tribute Portrait.

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Harley Porter and the Dream Killer, fiction, Bruce Atchison

Jerry beamed as he skipped through the doors exiting Edmonton’s recently-constructed Centennial Library. Though his fingers ached, he held the final draft of his latest novel in his hands. He scarcely saw the people he passed or felt the summer sun on his bare arms as he strode southward that afternoon toward Jasper Avenue.

The young author’s grin hardly diminished as he waited at the bus stop. Before he realized it, the familiar orange-and-tan Edmonton Transit vehicle pulled up at the curb. He climbed aboard the eastbound Number One, dropped three nickels into the aluminum fair box, and took the proffered transfer from the driver.

“Hey, Jackson!” a raucous voice boomed from the back seat. “Sit here.” The speaker, a pasty-faced, overweight man with short dark hair and wearing a black suit, slapped the vacant vinyl seat next to him.

Jerry sighed as he hid the sheaf of typing paper behind his back. As the bus was now moving and escape through the back door was impossible, he shuffled toward the rear. “I haven’t seen you for a while,” his acquaintance said as he stared at him over his horn-rimmed glasses. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

Jerry sat next to him and sheepishly held out his prized manuscript. “You’re writing another one of your blockbusters, eh?” he said as he yanked it out of Jerry’s hand and glanced at the title page. “Harley Porter and the Stoned Sorcerer? Don’t tell me you’re writing about magic.”

“Actually, I thought of this cool idea for a story, Bob,” he began. “It’s about this boy who…” Jerry saw the look of patronizing pity on his face and knew it was futile to explain.

As Bob flipped through the pages, he shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Jackson, when will you ever learn? You’ll never make it as a writer.” He stabbed his index finger at the title page. “First off, nobody would take a book like this seriously. Whoever heard of a stoned sorcerer?”

“Well,” Jerry shrugged, “I thought with all the interest in mind- expanding drugs these days, people could relate to a wizard who used them to gain access to higher magic.”

“Higher magic,” Bob scoffed. “Don’t you know anything about publishing trends?” He held up the manuscript and shook it. “This is the sixties, Jackson. Spy stories are hot now, not fairy tales.”

He opened his mouth to reply and then shut it as Bob scanned the manuscript. “This story is too weird to sell anyway. Whoever heard of a school for wizards? If you knew anything about fantasy, novices are always apprenticed by older magicians. And these imbecilic games,” he jabbed his index finger at the page, “aren’t what wizards would play in any case. By the way, Mister Tolkien, for your information, only witches ride brooms.”

Jerry sighed and stared into his lap. “Why don’t you give this writing stuff up,” Bob continued. “None of your ideas would ever have a hope in hell of selling. Remember that Ghost Blasters story you wrote last year? Who would believe a bunch of guys would live together in an old fire station and vacuum up ghosts. Then there was that moronic Car to the Future story. Why in the world would any scientist use a Cadillac as a time machine?”

“Well,” Jerry began, then stifled what he felt like saying.

“Bob’s tone softened. “Look, Jackson, I’m only telling you this for your own good. Trust me — you’re wasting your time with these crazy book ideas. I told you when you wrote The Da Vinci Cryptogram that it was doomed to fail. You could have saved yourself a lot of postage if you just gave up that idea. Didn’t it occur to you when you received your fifteenth rejection that publishers just weren’t interested?”

Jerry stared past Bob at the verdant river valley scenery. “I know I can write good stories,” he said weakly. “My mom likes them.”

“For crying out loud, Jackson, your mom isn’t a New York publishing tycoon. Mothers would love their son’s work if it was a bunch of incoherent Crayola crayon squiggles. Take it from me, you just don’t have the talent or the smarts to write a blockbuster. I know because I read all the trade publications.”

Jerry clenched his fists between his thighs and struggled to keep his face impassive. “My Language Arts teacher said I had potential.” He shook his long blond hair out of his eyes and looked hopefully at Bob. “I also won that writing scholarship from the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension too. Remember?”

“Those egg heads would award any moron one of those,” Bob sneered. “What sells is what people want to read, not fanciful academic nonsense.”

Jerry gripped the bar on the seat in front of him as the bus turned north onto eighty-second street. “I also had an article published in The Journal too.”

“One article does not a writer make, Jackson,” Bob mocked. “Give up this author craze. Get a trade of some sort. People will always need telephone installers, typewriter machine repairmen, telex operators, and the like. Even being a milkman is better than wasting time and money flogging goofy tales to editors who couldn’t care less about them. Maybe your old boss at N.A.D.P. will take you back?”

“No chance, not after what he said about my bell-bottom jeans and tie die shirt.”

“You’re just going to have to start wearing suits from now on, Jackson. Bosses don’t like slovenly job seekers. And get your hair cut while you’re at it. You look like a girl.”

Jerry let out a long sigh and then gasped. “My stop! Aw, man, what a drag. I’ll have to walk all that way back.”

Bob shoved the manuscript in his face as he jumped up and pulled the bell cord. “Don’t forget this, Jackson. It might come in handy for swatting flies.”

Before Jerry knew it, he was standing on the sidewalk by a bench. He watched the trolley bus as it dwindled into the distance. Then he looked down at his manuscript. “Guess Bob’s right,” he muttered to himself. “He works at Hurtig Books so he ought to know.”

As he trudged down a back alley toward his basement suite an hour later, Jerry spotted a garbage can with its lid removed. “Why not?” he said to himself as he looked down at the culmination of his labors. He held the manuscript over the mouth of the receptacle, then hesitated. “What a bummer. I worked so hard on this.” Though he willed his fingers to let go, he felt as if the paper had been glued to them.

“What do you think you’re doing, young man?” a silver-haired woman shouted through the back door of the house where the can stood. “Get out of here or I’ll call the police. I don’t like hippies hanging around my back gate.”

Startled by the shrill outburst, Jerry let go of his masterpiece. The title page blew off as the rest plunged into the darkness of the bin. He watched it flutter like a leaf and settle on the ground by his feet.

“You pick that paper up too,” the woman scolded. “People like you are a disgrace to the community.” She glared at him and slammed her screen door.

The title page seemed to accuse Jerry of betrayal as he picked it up and dropped it into the bin. “I guess writing’s not my scene,” he mumbled and turned his back on a year’s worth of hard work.

Bio: Bruce Atchison is a legally-blind Canadian freelance writer with articles published in a variety of magazines. He has also authored “When a Man Loves a Rabbit (Learning and Living with Bunnies),” a memoir. “Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School)” is his recollection of being sent five hundred miles from home. Both paperbacks are on sale at http://www.inscribe.org/BruceAtchison. Contact him at batchison@mcsnet.ca or on Facebook or Twitter.

He posts portions of his published memoirs, along with his upcoming How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity memoir, on http://www.bruceatchison.blogspot.com. Atchison lives in a tiny Alberta hamlet with his two house rabbit companions, Mark and Deborah.

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Writing Poetry Exercises, DeAnna (Quietwater) Noriega

Anyone can write poetry. It isn’t about rhyming, meter or number of syllables. It is just a way to capture an idea, get something out of your head or off your mind. Even if you tear it up or never show it to someone else it can give you a chance to think through problems or deal with the things that bug you. Here are a few easy exercises that will get you started.

Try writing a post card poem. The first line is the person you are directing your post card to. It can be anyone, your cat, a friend or a person from history.

Line two is the introduction, “This is just to Say.” “I just wanted you to know, “I was thinking of you today.”

Line three is the confession, the place where you convey your message.

Line four is the request, apology or excuse. “Please forgive me,” “I hope you don’t mind,” “I thought you should know.”

Line five is the conclusion.

This framework is just a reference guide. You don’t have to stick to the exact line count. Just use the elements the five lines represent and go for it. These can be humorous or serious. They make an excellent birthday, thank you, or note for a friend if you can’t afford a card! What is more, they are more personal. Here is one I wrote for my husband, which might give you a feel for the idea:

L1: My solid rock and safe place,
L2: I don’t think I have ever told you.
L3: How your love is my haven,
L4: When I shatter my wings fighting dragons,
L5: Thank you for picking up my pieces.

Another easy poem is to take a word and write down all the things you can think of to define what it means to you. For example: the word Peace. Then string them together. Here is a list that a friend made:

Pine forest
Ocean
Hot chocolate
Safe.

And this is the poem that came out of that list:

The scent of pines,
The sound of the ocean,
The taste of hot chocolate
Feeling loved and safe.

Choose a word like “love” and give it a try.

A variation of this which can be a group exercise is to write down five words that describe you. Then each person contributes a color, musical instrument, a place, an animal, and a kind of weather. Then each participant takes their list of personal attributes and adds two of the words from each category on the joint lists.

Here are my two word lists:

shy, advocate, determined, mischievous, creative;

lavender, gold; eagle, otter; chimes, voice; Pikes Peak, beach; sunny, storm;

Now start your poem with “I am,” and include your list of words to tell the world who you are. Here is my example poem:

I am a shy lavender chime.
A creative advocate voice,
A mischievous otter on a rocky beach of political reality.
Determined to be an eagle flying over Pikes Peak,
In the gold of the sun after the storm has passed,
And the battles are won.

No excuses now! Write a poem!

Bio: DeAnna (Quietwater) Noriega is half Apache and a quarter Chippewa. She lost her vision at age eight. She has been a writer/poet, advocate on disability issues and story teller since childhood. She currently is teamed with her eighth guide dog, Reno, a chocolate Labrador retriever.

Her writing has appeared in magazines such as: “Dialogue,” “Angels on Earth,” “the Braille Forum,” “Generations–Native Literature,” and in the anthologies “Behind Our Eyes,” “2+4=1,” “My Blindness Isn’t Black,” and “Where We Read the Wind.”

She lives in mid-Missouri with her husband, youngest daughter, three grandchildren and a host of critters.

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Eat Your Words, essay, Mary-Jo Lord

How many times have you been told, “You’re going to eat your words?” What if you could eat your words? What if they could be bitten into, chewed, sipped, sucked, or swallowed? With all of the languages, dialects, and expressions, there are enough words to fill you up for a lifetime.

Some books could satisfy your hunger for an evening or a day, while others might last a week. Dictionaries filled with hundreds of thousands of words are mega-malls of culinary delights, desserts, and delicacies.

There are down home comfort food kind of phrases such as “patchwork quilt,” “lazy afternoon,” and “front porch.” Words that bring to mind fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and fresh apple pie.

“Antidisestablishmentarianism,” the belief which opposes removing the tie between church and state, and “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” honorableness, are large beefsteak or full slab of ribs kind of words; while articles like “the” and “an” are just big enough to hold you over until a better time for a word fix.

Small one-syllable words like “dog,” “house,” or “trip” give us that filled up satisfied feeling that comes after topping off a good meal with coffee and ice cream. Snow storms and warm fires will make your mouth water for cookies and rich hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows.

“Pride” and “fear” are swallowed whole, leaving a bitter aftertaste like bad medicine. “Animosity,” “anger” and “angst” steam and sizzle like flaming fajitas on a Friday night.

There are sweet, syrupy names like “honey,” “sugar,” or “sweetie.” Names that, depending on the deliverer and context, can be either endearing or condescending. Oh, and let’s not leave out the salty words, the ones that you were forbidden to use until you moved out of the house. The prohibition of these expletives and profanities makes their use enticing to adolescents who think swearing will make them seem mature.

Students inhale facts about the Civil War and Erickson’s eight stages of development without stopping to consider real meaning. They have the facts safe and secure in short term memory ready to regurgitate on exam papers, where they are left to languish in tall stacks on professor’s desks.

Bibliophiles and wordaholics savor words like fine chocolate. Letters and syllables fill their mouths and linger on their tongues. Grandparents remember, recite, sing and celebrate lines of Frost and Sinatra.

So the next time someone tells you, “You are going to eat your words,” smile and agree. Say, “I will,” and do so with gusto, lapping up every last letter.

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JAN’S POETRY CLASS 1997, poetry, Nancy Scott

There’s Michael’s trillium
and Mary’s cerulean.
I should write a poem
with words like that, but I’m more attracted
to Barbara’s mystery men and women
at one end of a phone.
Her best poems always have phones.
Marianne has removed her wedding
ring, but wrestles with mocking
birds and pages of superstitions
for luck of not breaking circles.
And Chris asks
if angels have hands.
Skunks, pennies,
Harleys, bananas.
Poems pass like mashed
potatoes on Thanksgiving;
everyone gets a helping.
There are no trains
on Sunday afternoons.
We can listen.

Bio: Nancy Scott, Easton PA, is an essayist and poet. Her over-500 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries. Her third chapbook, co-authored with artist Maryann Riker, is entitled “The Nature of Beyond.”

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Resources, Marilyn Brandt Smith and John W. Smith

This is a collection of contest availabilities; writing information sources; and mainstream and disability magazines seeking specific material.

FlashShot accepts 100-word or less stories in the flash fiction genre. They publish new material on a daily basis. Stories usually have a twist at the end. Check their material before submitting. URL: http://www.gwthomas.org/flashshotindex.htm

Thema is a quarterly online magazine seeking stories and poems related to a specific theme. Their announcements of theme are made well in advance of the submission deadline. URL: http://members.cox.net/thema

The Lorian Hemingway Short Story Contest is a prestigious opportunity with thirty years of history. The first-place winner receives publication in a literary journal. There is prize money and a small entry fee. The deadline is May 1. URL: http://www.shortstorycompetition.com

The Inglis House Poetry Contest has been offered for several years. It is announced in the spring edition of Wordgathering, a magazine for disabled writers. The entry deadline is May 31. First, second, and third place winners are published in Wordgathering. Jimmy Burns was a first prize winner in 2009. URL: http://www.wordgathering.com

Vision through Words is a blog which accepts submissions of poetry and other short work such as memoir which relates to vision loss. The moderator posts regular Emails. There is also an opportunity to Email with other authors. URL: http://visionthroughwords.wordpress.com

The National Federation of the Blind Writers’ Division sponsors an annual writing contest for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. There is a small entry fee and prize money. Entries are usually accepted between February 1 and March 31. Marilyn Brandt Smith, Nicole Bissett, Chris Kuell, and Nancy Scott have won various prizes in this contest. URL: http://www.nfb-writers-division.net

The Onkyo Braille Essay contest is a world-wide opportunity sponsored by the Onkyo Corporation and the World Blind Union. It is administered on various continents by local advocacy or consumer organizations. There is no entry fee, and there is prize money. All submissions must be in hardcopy Braille, and the subject matter must relate to your use of Braille. Entries are accepted February 1 through April 30. Nancy Scott was a first prize winner in the North American/Caribbean region in 2009. For more information, search the web for “Onkyo Braille Essay Contest.”

Some of these opportunities require previously unpublished work. Some allow simultaneous submissions, and all have varying preferences for method of submission, word length, etc. Be sure to check the submission guidelines.

Here are a few helpful resources for writers.

Writers Weekly provides info on markets, publishing and more. http://www.writersweekly.com

Reference info–Find links to numerous reference sources, including features such as Today in History, Thought of the Day, Fact of the Day,
and more. http://www.refdesk.com

Publishing Law Center provides information about legal and copyright issues for authors and publishers. http://www.publaw.com

Bio: Marilyn Brandt Smith has taught social studies, Spanish, English, and special education. She is a licensed psychologist, and worked in rehabilitation.

She has edited magazines and newsletters since 1976, and was the first blind Peace Corps volunteer. She lives with her family and many animals in a hundred-year-old home in Kentucky. Her first book, “Chasing the Green Sun,” will be published in 2012, with a recipe book to follow soon. She loves writing flash fiction stories, and is the primary editor for the “Behind Our Eyes” anthology and this magazine. Another interest is music–barbershop harmony, folk and Americana, and current hits.

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One Writer’s Tale, fiction, Chris Kuell

My quest to become a professional writer began late in the summer of 1996. I was in Lowell, Massachusetts, visiting the grave of Jack Kerouac. I bummed a cigarette off this other homage-payer, Keith, who turned out to be the drummer for the moderately well known band Phish. We got to talking, and it turns out Keith had recently been released from a rehab center in Boston and was making his way out to visit his uncle in Montana. Lacking direction in life, and having little else to do, I asked if I could accompany him on his trip. Surprisingly, he agreed. During the long drive we stopped to visit many of Keith’s acquaintances, a generally wild, all-night bunch. It was through these informal interactions that I acquired a taste for a drink called the Kamikaze and ladies that didn’t shave their legs very often.

Along the way I learned that the uncle was a Native American living in a trailer on a reservation. Apparently he had recently won the lottery, and wanted to share his earnings with all his extended family members. When we finally pulled into the dirt driveway, about 45 miles outside Missoula, I was beat from the long road trip and ready for a beer. I had come to the right place. What greeted us there in Big Sky country was truly breathtaking. Above me, the blue heavens seemed to cascade infinitely upward. Before me was a giant mountain, snow capped and so surrealistically beautiful it could have been an Ansel Adams postcard. At ground level was a rusted old trailer, a mountain of empty beer cans the size of a two car detached garage, an eighteen wheeler refrigerated truck with a thirty foot red, white and blue Budweiser label on the side, and a dozen or so drunken Indians sitting in disarray on half-broken plastic lawn chairs.

Keith’s uncle, or Big Trout as he instructed me to call him, had spent 115,000 of his 125,000 dollars of lottery money on the truck full of beer. His plan was to drink all the beer with his friends and family, then cash in on the deposit on the cans, sell the truck and buy a bigger trailer. With about two thirds of the truck empty, it seemed things were on schedule.

One evening, I was walking with Big Trout, Budweiser in hand, when we heard the howling of a pack of coyotes in the distance. He scared the hell out of me by howling back, in perfect pitch to match the animals. They seemed to carry on a conversation for several minutes while I listened peacefully and sipped my beer. As we walked on, Big Trout informed me that the coyote was his spirit guide, and it had told him it was time I found mine. When I asked how I was to do this, he handed me a package wrapped tightly in old newspaper. The package held special herbs he said I should eat when I reached the peak of the tall White Mountain to the north. There, he informed me, I would meet my spirit guide, and finally gain direction in my life.

A few days later, I hitched a ride north with a couple of tie-dyed Dead Heads in a 1967 VW Microbus. They had stopped by Big Trout’s for beer and their own newspaper bound packages, so perhaps they were looking for direction as well. I can’t really say. I drove with them to Mount Ranier, listening to bootleg tapes of Grateful Dead shows the whole way. I don’t think these guys knew that Gerry Garcia was deceased. Not wanting to rain on their long, strange trip, I didn’t mention it.

They left me off at a camping supply store, where, using my old girlfriend’s credit card, I loaded up on stuff I thought I might need. After studying my new trail map, I was on my way.

The hike was harrowing, cold and treacherous, a narration I will save for another time. It suffices to say that, in less than 48 hours after base camp departure, I found myself entrenched in a crevice some 8 feet below snow level, starving, dehydrated and quickly entering delirium.

Only then did I remember the package Big Trout had given me. Since my body temperature was dropping and death was becoming swiftly probable, I used my one free hand to retrieve the bundle from my jacket pocket. Inside the bundle was a baggie containing a half dozen dried mushrooms. As instructed, I ate the mushrooms, licking the ice surrounding me occasionally to dilute the horrible taste. I think I must have drifted off to sleep for a while, because I remember awakening suddenly to the snorting of an animal. Looking up, I saw the majestic head of a large mountain goat, menacing ivory horns coiling outwards. We stared at each other in a timeless void, neither of us speaking, yet communicating.

“Are you my spirit guide?” I asked the goat.

“‘Fraid so,” it answered.

“Why do you say it that way?” I asked.

“Cause your ass is stuck in a crevice, and I’m only a God-damned goat, that’s why. I don’t even have opposable thumbs, how the hell am I supposed to get you outta there so you can start on what is going to be an incredibly difficult quest?”

I just looked up pleadingly at the goat. Perhaps it was something in that glacier water, but things didn’t seem right in my head.

“Here,” the goat said, then turned to show me its backside. As it started to squat, my initial thought was–Oh my God, my spirit guide is going to take a dump on me! But I quickly realized that he was actually just offering me his tail. I grabbed it with my free hand, and with surprising ease, my spirit goat pulled me from the clutches of the ice vice.

We sat together on the snow, looking over the vast extravaganza of life glistening before us. I asked the goat, “So, how did you get to be a spirit guide?”

“Oh, I used to be a writer in a previous life. Ever read any Jack Kerouac? On the Road. That was me. After I died, damn defective liver, I floated around in purgatory until the goat gig came up.”

I reflected on this for a few minutes before I asked, “So, spirit guide, what am I supposed to do with my life?”

“W-W-W-write R-r-r-r-omance,” he brayed, then, I swear, he began to laugh. It was really bizarre, this mountain goat bucking and snorting like he was having a seizure. Once he regained control, he continued, “Naw, I’m just kidding. Write anything you like, as long as you enjoy it.”

Writing? I had never really given any thought to becoming a writer. Seems like a reasonable occupation though — make your own hours; show up to work in your underwear if you want.

“But, I don’t know how to write. I don’t know what to write.” I objected.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “just make it up. The New York Times might even give you a job. Ya never know.”

With that, he bowed his shaggy head and butted me solidly with his horns. My coat and Gore-Tex pants offered very little resistance as I slid swiftly and violently down the face of the mountain.

Three weeks later, I came out of the coma in Saint Francis Hospital and they agreed to let me write in a small notepad. I penned an article about the kind folks I partied with at Big Trout’s place, and the local paper bought it. Eventually, I drifted back east, and now I am struggling to make a buck at stringing words together. Hell, at this point I’d be happy to make enough to cover my postage costs. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

Bio: Chris Kuell is a writer, editor and advocate living in Connecticut. A former research chemist, he lost his sight at thirty-five as a result of diabetic retinopathy. A few years later he learned how to use a computer with speech output and turned his efforts to writing. He’s had more than two dozen articles about blindness published, and his fiction has appeared in “Spillway Review,” “Bewildering Stories,” “Breath and Shadow,” “Apollo’s Lyre,” “Gambit,” “Mountain Echoes,” “Decomposition,” “The Sun,” and “Dialogue.” His stories also appear in the anthologies, “Coping with Vision Loss,” “Northern Haunts,” and “Mountain Voices: Illuminating the Character of West Virginia.” Fan and hate mail should be sent to ckuell@comcast.net

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We Must Walk in the Water to the Secret Blind Writers Group, poetry, Tara Arlene Innmon

A group of young blind women stand by the shoreline.
They tell me we are meeting across the water
At a dock which none of us can see.

Light glows from across the lake.
We lift up our skirts, put our notebooks on our heads
And wade into the water towards the light.

We laugh as light shimmers off the lake.
Stepping deeper we give up holding our skirts
And let them press heavy and wet against our thighs.

In this journey of writing our stories
We could be over our heads,
We could drown in our feelings,
But we keep going.

Bio: As a young person Tara Arlene Innmon loved writing almost as much as she loved drawing. She kept an extensive diary. When she started going blind she asked herself, “What will I do when I can’t draw anymore?” The answer came down like a bolt of lightning. “You will write.” She could have guessed. In 2000 she was a finalist in the SASE Jerome Foundation Fellowship grant. She went to Hamline University, graduating with an MFA in Creative Writing in 2008. She published poetry and short prose pieces in numerous literary journals, including Verve, River Image, and Wordgathering. Many poems are inspired by dreams.

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Writing Prompts, Nancy Scott

Use these exercises to write fiction, nonfiction and memoir, or poetry. Write about yourself, about a character, or write whatever any prompt brings to your mind.

Objects

  1. You come home from the casino having lost all the money you took. You find one poker chip in your pocket. You throw it out the car window or off your apartment balcony in disgust. What happens to the poker chip?

  2. What is the messiest place in your house? Why is it like this? What does it say about you or your character?

  3. Write about your favorite childhood toy.

  4. Here is a glass and a crystal castle. It has a mirrored base. It has Hershey-Kiss-shaped towers. It is three inches tall. If you look closely,
    you’ll see that the base has been re-glued to the castle.

Sound

  1. Write about the piano piece “Chopsticks.” Did you learn to play it? Did you play the accompaniment? Did you drive adults crazy playing it? Would you have rather played the guitar? etc.

  2. Pick a sound in your environment (refrigerator hum, furnace, crickets, grandfather clock, neighbor above you pacing at 1 a.m.). Describe it in detail. Why do you like or dislike the sound? What would its absence be like?

  3. Write about a song that makes you cry.

  4. Write about a sound you would banish from the earth (right now mine would be car alarms).

Language

Write whatever comes up, using one or more of these phrases:

  1. How many words in a mile?

  2. His cellphone played Beethoven.

  3. I need checks and love-letters (from a song lyric).

  4. Morning rings all the doorbells.

General

  1. Write about your most memorable part of today.

  2. Write about a memory that is fading.

  3. Write about someone you don’t know well (waitress, grocery cashier, someone in a telephone group for whom you have only a voice and a few details, neighbor you haven’t met yet, etc.). Use what you think you know about this person. Could you fall in love with this person? Would he or she be the victim, or the murderer?

  4. Pick seven words out of any book. Write them down, and write something based on them.

  5. Read a poem, and pick your favorite line or phrase. Use that to start writing.

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The Music of Writing: Warm-ups, essay, Rebecca L. Hein

A good writing session isn’t as elusive as you think. When every word is right, when your ideas flow and no barrier rises up to block your path, this experience can be recaptured. A consistent warm-up is the key.

We all know that unstructured writing should be a part of our daily routine, but how many of us have established this habit? Forty years of cello playing have taught me many things about creativity, yet until a few years ago I skipped my writing warm-ups whenever I felt pressed for time although I would never do this in my practicing.

I warm up on the cello to loosen my muscles and otherwise prepare for the day’s work. But a good warm-up also helps my brain. I play best when I’ve managed to schmooze my mental processes into a state of laziness so complete that I nearly lose track of what I’m doing. I don’t care what comes out of the cello, and that’s when my rhythm starts to bounce.

When the steady feel of a good warm-up pulses through a practice session, everything improves, even if it’s deadline-driven. Nothing constricts our voices like an upcoming performance, our inner critic, or the feeling that a piece has to be right; but in a warm-up we leave all this behind.

We write nonsense, silly sentences, or the opposite of what we mean, all to discover how words behave. There’s no mistaking that moment when empty words are pouring out of you and suddenly you feel language as music. It sings, it’s beautiful; and from there you float into your novel, essay, op-ed, or poem.

Flow is so intoxicating that it’s easy to forget how it begins. Enchanted by the words and phrases we never realize we could turn so well, we slide away from our crucial first step to each day’s writing. Yet if we return to it, the freedom of a good warm-up builds on itself day after day, little by little, until you find, as I have, that the majority of your work explodes into better tone, great pitch, and an exhilarating finish.

Bio: Rebecca Hein, a writing coach and teacher, specializes in the connection between music and writing, with emphasis on warm-ups, practice, tone, and performance. She is the author of “A Case of Brilliance,” her memoir about the discovery that her two children are profoundly gifted. Publishing two quarterly newsletters, “The Music of Writing” and “The Special Needs of Gifted Children,” she blogs about these subjects at http://www.musicofwriting.wordpress.com and http://www.caseofbrilliance.wordpress.com. Rebecca has a master’s degree in cello performance from Northwestern University. Her disability is chemical sensitivity.

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III. SPEAKING FROM A DIFFERENT VIEW

A Hill with Goats on Top, memoir, Mark BurningHawk Baxter

To a ten-year-old boy, recently moved from a small town to an even more rural area of Vermont, simple things like a tree or a secluded clearing in the woods can offer vast amounts of comfort. So, too, could the small but incredibly steep hill just behind our new house.

I had come across the word “hummock,” in a book I was reading, which described the hill precisely–short, incredibly steep and flat-topped. This hummock, probably grown slowly around a boulder left by a passing glacier thousands of years ago, shoved up into the sky even higher than the roof of our new house, which was a rambling three-family affair on a stretch of interstate highway south of Stowe. It, along with the various climbing trees scattered around our property, became my safe havens where I could bring a book and a sandwich, or stash my dreams of starships and adventure, later of starships with girls on them.

The fact that I was blind didn’t keep me out of the trees, and certainly didn’t keep me off the top of the hummock. I didn’t need to see to be able to climb, run around or follow a path through the woods around the edge of our acre and a half of land; I knew it all by heart.

In the winter I would sled down the steepest face of the hummock, a short but stomach-wrenching ride with a sharp right-hand turn at the bottom, to avoid running into our back steps. In the summer, with the tall grass sheltering flowers, the buzz of insects and the hot sun making everything lazy and slow, it was a launching pad for rockets, a place to fly a kite and, later, to put the antenna for my Ham radio station. When my father decided to rent out part of our house, it became our new tenant’s place to pen her goats.

We had lived, for the two years previous to moving to the Hummock House (that’s what it was called on our checks and letterhead), in an apartment complex, and no pets were allowed. I had a gerbil in a cage, but I have to say I didn’t learn much about animals from Squirt the gerbil, and he died shortly after we moved. However, in rural Vermont, livestock was more the norm.

We heard about a lease with a “goat clause” and decided to give it a try. Sue came to live in our next-door apartment and put her goats on top of the hummock. When she offered to teach me to milk them, I jumped at the chance with my typical ten-year-old hyperactive enthusiasm.

I had never even milked a cow before, much less a goat, and I was told that goats are harder to milk than cows–more stubborn about it, and not as even-tempered when it came to things like cold little boy hands on their teats. That was another thing; goats have teats, cow’s have udders. Before puberty, it is just this blissfully simple.

Teats are smaller, too. However, like all domesticated milk-giving animals, teats get uncomfortable when full of milk and a goat, even if it is cranky and keeps shifting about, really does want to be free of all that weight dragging it down painfully. Goats just want you to do it their way. I was told all this by Sue, the “goat lady,” as I came to think of her (it was a term of flattery from a 10-year-old boy), and with some trepidation on everyone’s part I climbed the short, steep face of the hummock to where they were kept on the top.

I remember that it was winter, so cold sometimes that it hurt to breathe. The scent of wood smoke was ever-present, from our chimney as well as from others up and down the highway. Wood smoke can drift for miles on a clear night with a breath of breeze to push it slowly along. In the moments of cold, still clarity that are winter nights in northern Vermont, sometimes I thought I could feel the pinpoints of light from the stars tickling my skin.

Goats have a strong odor. It can take your breath away, but it’s not unpleasant, as long as they are well cared for and healthy, and these were. They are not very affectionate animals in the conventional sense, though they will come around and investigate you. They don’t purr when you pet them, or wag their tails in greeting, sometimes they don’t seem to care if you come or go. They are, however, glad for food, and relieved when they are milked.

Until we moved to the Hummock House, I hadn’t known much about animals other than dogs and cats. I killed the goldfish I won at a fair when I was six by petting it. Squirt the gerbil didn’t provide me much of an education, other than that clean cedar shavings are one of the best scents in the world, and that exercise wheels need to be regularly oiled, or they will keep you awake at night.

I didn’t know what to expect, but neither did I have any preconceptions, so when the goats bleated at me, rather than purring or wagging, I wasn’t too put off. Once happily distracted by goat feed, which Sue showed me how to apportion for each goat, they could be milked. She showed me how to massage the teats first, warming them and drawing the milk down toward the nipple.

“Don’t just squeeze the end, she’s not a ketchup bottle. Instead, use a circular motion and grasp the teat with one hand at the base and one hand further down, and start by pressing upward toward her belly, then drawing gently downward while squeezing gently and steadily.”

With a little practice, I was able to hear the satisfying sound of milk squirting into the metal pail placed for this purpose in front of the goat’s hind hooves.

They were a little skittish at first, but once the goats (whose names I cannot, for the life of me, remember) got used to my scent and my presence, and if I remembered to warm my hands in my armpits first, even the crankier of the two settled down and let me milk her. I never developed a taste for goat’s milk, but I was still filled with wonder the moment I put it together that this was where milk came from–be it a cow or a goat, this was the raw form of the stuff in the plastic carton in the fridge. It was a substance from a living creature, not something produced in a factory.

Aim is very important when milking a goat, especially if the goat lady is crouching opposite you milking the other goat. “Watch it,” she cried, laughter in her voice, “you just squirted me!” I felt warmth and wetness against the front of my coat, the odor of fresh goat’s milk wafted into my face and heard the wet sound as Sue squirted me back playfully. Warmth spread from the impact point. Always eager for horse play, even with goats, this time I aimed for her and, with a shriek of laughter, a teat fight ensued.

Before Super Soakers and water cannons, there were, placidly munching away on feed pellets and loaded with hot white ammo, teat wars! Goats not only provided ammunition but you could take cover behind them and keep from getting splatted–in theory. The goats seemed to sense the mood and something about the way they stood and the sounds they made seemed happier in response. Needless to say, not much milk got into the pails that night and my mother had a fit when she saw my new Carter’s winter jacket liberally stained with flaky white residue and smelling like goat’s milk.

The epitome came when Sue went away for a week’s vacation. Someone had to take care of the goats, and I eagerly applied for the job. Twenty whole dollars for a week of feeding them and milking them and brushing out the knots in their coats. I got the usual lecture about responsibility, and taking my duty seriously, and it was with great pride and somber dignity that I began my chore.

I was a pretty short, skinny kid–about four feet nine, maybe 70 pounds–when I was ten. While the goats were not taller than me, they outweighed me and were probably stronger than I was. Suddenly, there I was, little old me facing animals eager for food, cranky with the weight of milk dragging at them, and wondering where the heck their real caretaker was. It was a humbling moment.

Still, I had a job to do, and great responsibility weighed on my skinny shoulders; so I proceeded, with trembling hands, to feed and take care of the goats. When it came time to milk them, I remembered to warm my hands in my armpits first, then squatted, assuming the milking position.

I remember, free from the distraction of talking to Sue and of hearing her move about, free even from her presence, how the creature in front of me filled my senses. Her smell, so strong that it became intimate, filled with the knowledge of living different from my living. Her soft, even breath moved her flanks regularly in and out, coarse, curly hair shifting against my palm as I caressed her gently, preparing her for milking, reassuring her that everything was alright. The soft sound of her eating, the rumble of digestion, was loud where I squatted next to her.

I knelt on cold ground, the earth frozen hard and the snow long since trampled into mud which had frozen. Under my hand I distinctly felt the imprint, preserved in the frozen ground, of a hoof. This was the first track I ever became aware of; a footprint left behind which can tell volumes about what made the track and how it passed through. As my hands found her teats, a deep calm, feeling like a surrender, stole over me. In minute shifts and subtle sounds, sensing a soft whisper deep inside me, I could tell when I had placed my hands wrong, or when I was pinching a fold of skin. A gladness seemed to echo in me when I got it right, milk splashing rhythmically into the pail, the sound changing from a hollow metal ringing sound to a softer, more liquid sound as the pail filled. It was as if I could sense the energy of the goat, allowing me to take from her the nourishment meant for her young. I wondered if she knew that it nourished us. I could feel her relief as the weight was lifted from her. In my ten-year-old way, I realized that her giving this stuff of life was as sacred an act as my taking it from her should be. From then on, until I had earned my twenty dollars, and even after, until Sue moved out, taking her goats with her, I made it a point to say “Please” before milking the goats, and to say “Thank you” afterward.

That first night, when I had finished and lingered for a moment to pet the goats and make sure they were all set for the night, I paused to stand at the brow of the hummock. A cold winter night, still and clear and silent, was clamping ruthlessly down on the earth. Things seemed intensely clear for me at that instant; smells of smoke and of cooking food, far-off swish of cars on the highway, feel of the cold ground pressing upward against the soles of my boots, the smallest puff of breeze only making the stillness even deeper.

I threw back my head as a wave of exuberant delight started at my feet and welled up through me. It carried me down the hill in a flail of gawky limbs and a wild, childish shout of laughter. It had no words, that laughter, and if you had asked me then why, at that moment, every cell in my being was joyous to the point of aching, I could not have told you. I felt a oneness, a gentleness which moves through all things, wash through me that night. It has been my life’s mission to understand that oneness ever since.

Bio: Mark BurningHawk Baxter attended mainstream school in Vermont and earned a Bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth. His work-arounds for blindness were complicated by the fact that he knew his family’s trait of hearing loss was likely to add to his issues.

He wanted a career in music and literature. By reaching outside those fields and investigating spiritual study and succeeding at martial arts, he earned confidence and independence.

He uses a guide dog, and is now in a position to help others find their way through music and expression so blindness and partial deafness need not limit one’s aspirations. Visit his work and share yours at http://markburninghawk.net.

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BORDER PATROL, monologue, Donna Grahmann

My nose crinkles and twitches from the hint of a familiar scent. Am I dreaming or is my wish coming true? Muffled click-clicks coming up the lake house stairs prick my ears up to full attention. Peeking through the tiny slits of my eyes, I spot a shadowy figure quietly creeping toward me. Silent breaths escape my lungs. Saliva pools as my tongue traces my lips. Each click forward makes my heart jack hammer in my ears. Counting down, I ready myself for action, three…two…one.

I explode from my bed toward the masked bandit. A warning growl rumbles up from deep in my chest. Catching him off guard, my sudden appearance sends his screeches echoing across the lake. He breaks my grip with a whirling spin and leaps off the porch. I vault down the stairs after him.

My brother thunders in from behind the house at the sound of my warning growl. Our three bodies slam together and react like a heap of Tasmanian devils, each fighting to be on top. We seem to create a vacuum as we tornado into the yard. Metal shelves teeter-totter back and forth, crashing behind us. Broken clay pots, dirt, plants and a rainbow of flowers scatter across the lower deck.

Motion detector lights snap on, making white spots dance across my eyes. A fierce bite to my right ear sends red hot pain streaking down to the bottom of my feet. My toes dig deep into the grass for traction and speed. The masked bandit zigzags frantically through the low hanging fog hovering across the yard. My final lunge for him leaves me standing with a mouthful of his hair sprawling from my teeth. Fog trails behind him through the small opening in the fence as his chatters fade into the forest.

Once again, that sneaky raccoon escapes my capture, but our border collie patrol protects the trash can for another night.

Bio: Donna Grahmann lives in Magnolia, Texas with her husband, David, and her guide dog, Huey. Her vision loss is due to diabetic retinopathy. She organized and continues to maintain her neighborhood’s Crime Watch program. She is an accomplished equestrian and dog handler. Donna and her horse, Rebel, won the 1978 Texas State Pole bending Championship. She and her Border Collies, Scotti and Clyde, placed second at the Texas Sheepdog Finals in separate years. Writing children’s books drawn from her experiences with her animals gives her endless enjoyment. Her current working titles include ALONGSIDE HUEY, BORDER PATROL, and EYE ON EWE.

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The Wishing Well, fiction, DeAnna (Quietwater) Noriega

“I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight,” said the young woman dropping a dime and a penny into the wishing well.

“Silly! That is for stars!” thought the spirit of the well. “As if they really care what happens to tiny beings living on a spinning mud ball circling a minor one of their own kind. You are doubly foolish as what you want is right there across the square. You fill your head with day dreams of tall handsome strangers and walk right past that young man selling newspapers and candy from the kiosk on the corner. You never notice how his face lights up every time you remember to say good morning as you pass. Oh, he isn’t tall, handsome or rich. But he has a gentle heart and thinks you are absolutely beautiful. You don’t need to lose twenty pounds, wear ridiculous high heels or dye your brown hair blond to make him love you. He thinks you are perfect just as you are.”

“If only I could get that raise! I know it would help get me out of debt,” murmured the middle aged woman as she tossed a quarter into the well.

“Oh for goodness sakes,” A penny would have been fine, if you paid more attention to how you spend your money, you wouldn’t need a raise. Every morning I see you rushing into the Starbucks for a fattening over priced coffee. If you got up ten minutes early and made coffee at home it would save you a cool twenty dollars a week. Then what about all of those trendy clothes you buy on your lunch breaks. You wear them once or twice and realize that they don’t look all that great on you. You end up donating them to the thrift shop. Get real girl friend. Buy simple good quality things that mix and match, are easy care and don’t need to be dry cleaned. You would look much better in outfits chosen because they suit you. You wouldn’t need to grab a high calorie treat because you are depressed at the fact you don’t look like the models in your fashion magazines. How many of the women you know actually do?”

“Sometimes I get so tired of all of these people longing for things that they can easily have if they just stop wishing and take charge of their lives. Then again, jobs for water sprites are thin on the ground these days, so I guess I should be glad some superstitions are still followed even if its only in a backwards, guilty–toss salt over your left shoulder–sort of way. Oh, hello there Kit Kat. Sure, settle down here on the coping of my well in the sun. You look pretty thin and hungry. Sorry I don’t have any goldfish for you. Just a lot of useless change people toss in here. That isn’t of much use to you. Hmmm, maybe we can work out a plan between us. See that nice fellow over there at the news stand? I bet if you go over and meow at him, he will find you something to eat. He is a bit sad and lonely just now because that girl he would like to know better didn’t smile at him this morning. He might let you live there in his stand if you chase off mice and rats. Last winter he had to use traps and poison to keep them out of his candy and gum. I heard him say how he hated doing it. Tomorrow, you could jump down from the counter and twine around the girls feet as she goes by and who knows, she might stop and they might talk. It could be the start of something. Now what can I do to introduce miss frivolous money manager to that nice gentleman who works for the credit consolidation company? He stops in at Starbucks a couple of times a week. I wonder if it would be unethical to trip her as she passes his table teetering along on those four inch platform shoes. All is fair in love and war, so they say! Besides I have the reputation of this wishing well to keep up.”

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Friday Rendezvous, fiction, John Wesley Smith

It was one of those trips foolish men sometimes make. After 15 years away, I was contemplating moving back to the area and taking up a new line of work. I’d driven 500 miles to find out whether I could reconnect with old friends.

I paid visits to a select group of people I’d known from high school, college and my first real job. I even risked being propagandized by a colleague from my days as a political activist.

I should have seen the writing on the wall sooner. My week became what some today would call an epic fail. I discovered yawning chasms between people I’d long respected and admired and me. A dream vacation morphed into a heart rending nightmare.

Still, I clung to a sliver of hope that I’d have one refreshing encounter before packing for home. Oddly enough, I found a connection with a girl I once adored, but it wasn’t one I wanted at all. It was an ironic twist I couldn’t have predicted in a million years.

Charlene was next on my list. I was determined to find her. Only I didn’t expect to find her dead.

While eating breakfast with Mother in her cramped apartment kitchen, I pondered my next move as I glanced through the Milligan Gazette. Then I saw the funeral notice. I gasped. The paper rattled as it slipped to the table. My plans for the day were set.

“Oh, my, didn’t anybody tell you?” Mother put down her cup of coffee and looked at me over her silver framed glasses. “Charlene Hanley was killed in a terrible car crash the other night. They say it will be a closed coffin funeral.”

She lifted her coffee cup as if to take another sip, then lowered it again. My hands shook as I began reassembling the newspaper.

Mother talked on. “Charlene was one of the Wilson girls, you know. That poor family has had so many tragedies what with sickness and cancer and all. Now this. A person might think the family was cursed or something. Charlene was in your class, wasn’t she, Steve?”

“Yes.” I was dazed as I reached for a cinnamon roll. “The service is at 10:00. I have to be there.”

“I think it’s awfully nice of you to go. I remember when you and Bob double dated the night of your senior prom. I always thought Bob and Charlene made such a nice couple.” She raised her cup again to take another sip. “Somewhere in one of my albums I still have the picture of you and Cathy standing next to them before you left that evening.”

I knew which picture she meant. She insisted Bob and Charlene come inside the house so we could all stand in front of the fireplace for pictures. It was the last thing I wanted, but, there we were, waiting for our images to be immortalized on film.

Diffused light from a bright overcast sky made indoor lighting unnecessary for the picture. Honeysuckle wafted in through the large front room window, mingling with perfume and cologne.

Bob stood on the left radiating self confidence in a lavish cream colored tux from that big city men’s store whose name I could never pronounce. The contrast of his black hair and mustache added to his distinguished appearance. Charlene looked pleased to have Bob’s arm around her. Her frilly dress was robin’s egg blue and showed just enough cleavage to make me embarrassed for wanting to stare.

I stood on the right in my frumpy charcoal grey church suit next to plump, red headed Cathy, who was decked out in a magenta getup somebody abandoned at the Salvation Army store. I might as well have given her dandelions compared to the fancy corsage Bob gave Charlene.

Mother thought it was charming of me to ask Cathy to the prom because she was seldom asked out. How could I ever have told Mother I wished Charlene was my prom date instead of Cathy? But Cathy was thrilled to be with me. Asking her out was a cinch. Asking Bob if he would drive us in his new Monte Carlo tied my guts in knots.

Going to the prom was an act of desperation on my part, but being on a double date was as close as I’d ever get to Charlene. I was sure Charlene thought I was from another planet. Worst of all, I’d been the stupid jerk who led her to that conclusion.

I set down my partially eaten roll, looked at my watch and stood up. “I guess I’d better shower, shave, and get dressed if I’m going.”

“Alright, dear. I’m sure Bob and the girls will be glad to see you.”

Peaks of silver morning sun filtered through green leafy tunnels as I drove. My little red Toyota scooted down streets with familiar names I hadn’t seen in years. I shook my head at the cookie cutter sameness of the white and yellow houses in the subdivisions that weren’t there when I lived around here. How many nameless farmers had surrendered their land for this?

Then my thoughts drifted back to Charlene. It struck me as odd that this should be a Friday. In my mind Fridays had a quirky significance for her and me.

In high school I had a huge crush on Charlene, but played idiotic head games. Her desk was behind mine in last period English class. Every Friday I made it a point to turn around and quietly tell her I was on my way to an important secret rendezvous after school.

“Like in a James Bond movie?” She said.

“Who?” I was too embarrassed by my ignorance to tell her I’d never seen a Bond movie. That was because my folks said we didn’t have money to spend on such mind polluting trash.

“Oh, you know. Agent Double Oh Seven, the famous spy.” She smiled and my heart beat faster.

“Uh, yeah, something like that. It’s a special mission only I can carry out. I don’t have any choice.”

Part of what I told her was true. My parents took me to see a psychologist each week for counseling. I didn’t understand why they thought I needed it. I couldn’t admit to anyone that this was happening. Obviously, I’d never tell Charlene.

ADD and ADHD weren’t yet fashionable. Anyone on antidepressants took them in secret because classmates would heckle them as candidates for the state mental hospital if they knew.

Charlene played along with my silliness each Friday. That attracted me to her because I was sure nobody else would have done that. I was clueless as to how to carry on a normal conversation with her. All I knew to do was to tease more next time so she would talk to me.

I had hoped to see her now because I ached to set things right. I needed to explain why I had been such a fool in the past. Why hide it any longer? I felt compelled to tell her I’m taking a cocktail of antidepressants for what my doctor calls clinical depression. I was sure Charlene never took a pill in her life, yet somehow I knew she’d understand.

I chuckled to myself. The pendulum of pride had swung the other way compared to 15 years ago. Now I wanted to tell her all. Doctor Brandt would probably tell me I was obsessing. But the joke was on me. I couldn’t tell Charlene I was struggling emotionally years before. Now I couldn’t tell her anything no matter how much I wanted to.

Brady’s Funeral Chapel was crowded and smaller than I remembered. It was dimly lit with no stained glass windows to let in the sunshine.

I was curious why Charlene’s funeral wasn’t being held in the big Presbyterian Church downtown. Something about this didn’t make sense. It didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t comfortable asking anyone. I didn’t know who to ask anyway.

I stayed as unobtrusive as possible and hid myself in a rear pew by the door. A couple of old classmates waved at me from a distance. I was baffled as to why more of them weren’t there. I knew Charlene wasn’t the most popular girl in school, but I would have guessed her circle of friends had been larger. I rationalized that it was a weekday and maybe they couldn’t get away from work.

The service was comprised of the usual platitudes. I got the impression the minister didn’t know Charlene any better than Joe Anonymous from the subdivision I’d driven by earlier.

When the service ended, I sneaked out the door and found a chair in a dark corner of the lobby. I watched as family and friends filed out.

My classmates bustled past as if they were late for an appointment. I was relieved because I didn’t want to face them. Then a nagging feeling from the old days crept over me. Did they know some secret I didn’t? Just like high school days, I was left out. I was nothing more than an unseen observer.

“Oh, look, Jeanette. We missed seeing these pictures when we came in.”

Two middle aged women in pastel dresses stood nearby with their broad backs to me, gazing at a nearby display I’d overlooked. I tried to hear their conversation, but couldn’t make it out.

I studied the pictures after the ladies moved on. Charlene was as lovely and sophisticated as I remembered. Her luscious brown shoulder length hair and warm blue eyes brought back a pain in my heart I hadn’t felt in years.

She looked so happy in those annual Christmas photos. The colorful vacation shots of Hawaii and Mexico proved she had done well by marrying Bob. If there was ever a woman whose destiny was to live out the american dream, surely it was Charlene, and she’d made it.

A lump filled my throat as I realized the gap between us could never have been bridged. There’d never been any chance of me getting together with Charlene–ever. It wasn’t meant to be.

Pungent cologne and a firm hand on my shoulder jarred me out of my reverie.

“Steve! Is it really you?”

I stood up and faced Bob Hanley. He hadn’t changed, except for a few wrinkles and greying temples. I reached out to shake his hand, but couldn’t meet his eyes.

What in the world could I say to greet his two young daughters? I could think of nothing. They stood quiet and dignified on either side of their father. One was about eight I guessed and the other ten or eleven. The youngest girl cradled a doll and looked me over. I winced a little. How could this little girl intimidate me? In her pretty yellow and white dress she was a young version of Charlene.

I cleared my dry throat. “Well, Bob, I’m home on vacation for a few days and saw the announcement in the paper this morning. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. It’s quite a surprise to see you. Charlene talked about you now and then, but she never expected to see you back here.” He stroked his mustache. “Well, I guess she didn’t at that. But the point is, she told me you said you were never coming to any of her class reunions.”

I stood stiff as a mannequin, shocked that Charlene had spoken of me at all.

After a second, Bob laughed softly. “You know, she told me it was all right with her if you never came back because she’d never forgive you for not following the script of some Shakespeare play you were doing in English class. Pretty silly, isn’t it?”

My stomach lurched. He would have to bring that up.

“But I don’t really think she meant what she said,” Bob continued. “She didn’t hold a grudge against anybody. She was such a wonderful woman.”

“Yeah. You’re a lucky man, Bob.” I felt flushed and didn’t know what else to say.

Bob became somber again. He reached into the left front pants pocket of his navy blue suit and jingled loose coins. “Good of you to come today though, Steve. Thanks. Too bad Charlene couldn’t have seen you. On the other hand, if she were here…Well, you know. I guess we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

I nodded.

Bob glanced at the dwindling crowd and sighed. “All right, we’d better go girls. Good to see you, Steve.”

As Bob whisked the girls off, I sat down and stared once more at the pictures of Charlene. Something in the most recent pictures of her seemed out of place; but I couldn’t put my finger on it. What was different? I sat puzzling over it as long as I could until I was the last person out of the funeral home.

I squinted through white hot summer brightness and spotted my little red car in the nearly empty parking lot. Lost in thought, I stopped walking as I reached into my shirt pocket for my sunglasses. The gossipy banter of a couple of ladies at the far end of the lot caught my ear.

As I reached my car, I sneaked a peek to the right. It was the same two women who’d been at the picture display inside. I heard a click as the first woman unlocked the doors of a BMW.

“The thing is, Judy told me Dr. Applegate had just changed her prescription. But, you know, Anna, I don’t think the warning labels they put on these things nowadays are enough.”

“You don’t think they help?” The second woman’s head lowered a little as she prepared to climb into the passenger side.

“No, these antidepressants should be taken off the market altogether before someone else has a suicidal rendezvous in their car with a tree, just like Char–.”

The car doors thumped shut. The two women sat enveloped in their silver cocoon.

I thudded hard against my car as if I’d been shoved. Then I lost control to a rush of pent up tears.

Bio: John Wesley Smith is a blind writer from central Missouri. Most of his creative endeavors go into his blog site at http://www.destinysurvival.com. He’s reluctant to say which parts of the preceding story are autobiographical.

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What I See, memoir, David Kingsbury

I am totally blind. I have been this way for seven years. And for 47 years before that, I inhabited the sighted world. If you ask me how the blind visualize the world, I can only answer as one who has been blind for just a short time.

I remember what total darkness “looked like” on those rare occasions when I experienced it sighted. I once toured a cave deep underground. The tour guides turned off the lights. The cold, dank cave air felt colder. Sounds were amplified. People tittered nervously. When I was small, I sometimes went into a closet and stuffed clothes under the crack in the door. I stayed in the closet as long as I could stand it–two or three minutes max. In both the cave and the closet, I thought more about the absence of light than the presence of darkness.

Now, darkness is composed of a black background with an infinite number of white pin pricks. The white pinpricks are constantly shifting position like twinkling stars in a vast Milky Way. As before, I sense about a 180 degree field of vision. I have a prosthetic right eye and a withered left one, but the muscles are intact. As I move them up and down, and from left to right, I “see” a galaxy.

When I rouse myself from sleep and am not yet fully awake, a multitude of shooting stars replace the white pin pricks. Before fading out, they arc and dance, resembling the frenetic brush work of Van Gogh.

For the sighted, infinity is abstract and theoretical. A very tangible infinity confronts my blind eyes every moment of my waking life. It is not possible to count the little white pin pricks: there are too many. Nor is there a place to begin counting.

When I could see, I would go to the countryside on moonless clear evenings to gaze at the stars. The number of stars on such a night could be perhaps labeled infinite. But that was different from what I see now. Before, I could start counting from some familiar starting point like the North Star or the Big Dipper. The space confronting me was bordered by trees and earth. And the sun would rise tomorrow, displacing the stars with sun and clouds.

The infinity now staring me in the face at every conscious moment has no beginning and no end, no reliable reference point from where I can start. All points of light are identical. Yet I see more than just white on black and my seeing experience has evolved since I became blind. At first, I saw multi colored picture shows over which I had no control: vivid fireworks displays; lush green evergreen forests; and cold, clear mountain streams with smooth, round pebbles rippling beneath rushing water. These visions came unannounced. I stopped whatever I was doing, sat back with my mouth agape in wonder, and watched. But as soon as I directed my attention to them they would wash away like sand beneath a receding wave. The doctors said the brilliant visions were normal reactions to sudden blindness. In a frantic effort to compensate for the loss of sight, my brain had gone into overdrive to transmit signals to my non-functioning eyes. They told me not to worry: it would pass. But I wanted the light shows to continue: they were my last tenuous connection to sight.

I often wonder what a person who has been blind from birth “sees.” Is it even the right question? I can not grasp their understanding of color, the shape of people’s faces, an ocean of breaking waves or a snow-capped mountain. I once asked a congenitally blind girl what she was “seeing” while talking to me. She said she was “seeing my voice.” I asked her to guess my age. She undershot it by twenty years. I liked that.

An art teacher of blind children once told me about the picture that a little girl drew of a bus: two horizontal lines together below; one vertical line to the left; and a third horizontal line a bit above the first two. These were the two steps the child climbed to get into the bus, the bar she grasped to steady herself, and the seat she sat on. In her tactile world, her drawing made perfect sense.

At my city’s art museum, they give tours to blind people. I ask how they describe colors to those who have never seen. The sighted guides associate various colors with emotion and temperature. Red is hot like fire and sexy dresses. Yellow is warm like the sun’s touch on skin. Blue is cool like water. How well that works for the congenitally blind, I do not know. Maybe they just don’t lose much sleep over it.

In my first few months of blindness, when I dreamt, I was a blind guy who could see. Blindness was an inconvenience I could turn on and off like a light switch. Say I wanted to go to the supermarket in my dream: I could see for that, but there was an unwritten contract that when I got home, the bag would go back over my head. Not so bad really — just a minor irritation. But then when I awoke, I would remember that wasn’t the deal at all. The suffocating bag over the head was non-negotiable, never to be ripped off. I would not see my two teenage boys grow into manhood, nor my daughter — just twelve — grow into a beautiful young woman.

I was living in Italy when I became blind. My sighted life had been truly international. I would never again visually feast on the masterpieces of the Vatican Museums or the Louvre; never again gaze on the mighty swells of the Congo River; nor the white sand beaches of Senegal fusing with aquamarine water and sky at a distant, sun-bleached horizon; nor the jutting rock peaks of the Dolomites. I would never again embark on splendid solitary strolls through the Byzantine Maze of Rome’s cobblestone streets, nor trudge up the Montmartre Hill to take in the panorama of Paris at twilight. I had no idea what my life would become, but it was clear what it no longer was.

When I first became blind, everybody had some little pearl of wisdom to impart. While it was all well-meaning, much of it had seemed like empty clich� to me. Take life one day at a time, the Lord works in strange ways. On and on it went. The best piece of advice I got? “I bet you get a lot of advice these days. Take it all with a grain of salt.”

Yet one particular piece of counsel attached itself to me and wouldn’t let go. I would frequently revisit it from different angles and at varying degrees of acceptance of or anger about my altered sensory state. “You need to use your remaining senses to experience and appreciate the world in different ways than before.” My rehab instructor in Rome had been the first to tell me this. We had been outside during a fragrant spring day, the type of day I had adored when sighted, but now viewed as a crucible, a crushing reminder of the rich visual cornucopia just beyond my grasp. She made me feel and smell some flowers. It would be nice to report that this had been some sort of epiphany moment, like when Helen Keller’s teacher Ann Sullivan helped her link touch and sound to understand the magic of language, discovering water, or “wah-wah” as little Helen blurted out in The Miracle Worker.” But like young Helen who first had to smash her mother’s best china and punch out a few of Miss Sullivan’s teeth, I too had to experience some hard knocks before I could get on with my life.

So when my rehab trainer told me to use touch and smell to appreciate the flowers, I politely acknowledged her wisdom, but remained unconvinced. Before life could seem worth enjoying again, three tormented years would be required, including bouts of deep depression, a move back to this country, an additional three months of rehab training, and most important, making new blind friends.

My wah-wah moments were found in unexpected places, surfacing while doing things I had given up hope of ever doing again. I came to realize that what you did was less important than who you did it with. Previously, I had loved going to art museums, preferably alone. It now became a social event as I went with blind friends and borrowed the guides’ eyes to construct mental images of the art before me. I learned to sail blind, experiencing it for what it was: neither better nor worse than when sighted — just different. I concentrated my energy on what was there rather than what was absent. The casual conversation with friends in the boat, the soothing gurgling of water lapping against the hull, the brush of the salt breeze upon my face, these all gave enjoyment simply because they were what they were.

Over time, the spectacular lightshows and “just like you were there” dreams have faded. Yet two visions regularly reappear. One is of a series of stained glass windows: a large center pane and two smaller ones on either side. They are located in a side chapel of Notre Dame in Paris, or so my hazy memory tells me. The colors are muted and somber. This was because I only visited Notre Dame in the late afternoon when the sun was on another side of the building. The windows contain intricate mosaic designs and I sense their perfect symmetry. Some day, I will return to Paris and have my stained-glass windows described to me.

In the second vision, heart-shaped lilac leaves cover the wall of my neighbor’s house outside Boston where I grew up. My son drove me back there once. He described chrysanthemums instead. He is no botanist, but I remember the neighbors had chrysanthemums too, so he was probably right. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. Anyhow, lilac bushes are what I see and I’ll stick with them for now.

The stifling bag-over-the-head claustrophobia has receded. Yet I still experience pangs of deprivation from time to time. I would give anything for a glimpse of my babbling baby granddaughter with her wispy hair and little sausage legs; my three children–now fully grown; and the faces behind the voices of my blind friends who have done so much to revive me. Striking visual memories resurface from everyday scents and smells. The aroma of a late afternoon summer rain conjures up the vivid image of black storm clouds contrasted against the silver undersides of rustling leaves. The scent of wood smoke makes me yearn to see the bone-cracking blueness of carpets of snow on a frigid moonlit night.

Yet I can now contain these feelings of loss. They have been reduced from gaping wounds to minor aches. I am thankful for my 47 years of sight, but have turned the page on that chapter of my life. I have become used to my blindness, that is, the blindness itself and my altered experience of sight. I see now with something other than my physical eyes. I fabricate images: I “imaginate.” My palette is more limited than before, and I have to work harder for what I see, but that’s OK. Coping with blindness has meant accepting the world on its new terms rather than futilely yearning for what it once was but can never be again. This, more than anything else, is what I now see.

Bio: David Kingsbury has been published in Defenestration, the Boston Herald and West Roxbury Transcript. He lives in Stoughton, Massachusetts and is currently working on a novel.

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IV. POETS’ FOOTPRINTS

Survivorship, prose poem, Jimmy Burns

Returned from hospital…back from the edge. Mutilation spun as healing. Syntax incomplete. Spastic-not far from gibberish elaborated by slurred lips. Hospital bed and electric wheelchair disinfected in his absence with strong bleach. Stench of cleanliness burns clogged nostrils.

Ticking of clock-tock disturbs equilibrium. Feet refuse to stand to pivot to transfer to the next best thing. Rustle get well mail with good right hand. Left incompetence resumes death from sublet shoulder. Hangs like oblivion. Debt collectors beg on phone, “Can you send me a check today?” Medical bills escalate his madness…more…more…bank account drained below subsistence level.

Wife inquires, “Are you glad to be home?”

The man responds, “Life goes on…”

Bio: Jimmy Burns survived a stroke in 2005 and writes his poetry from his wheelchair parked at his home near Houston. Recent disability theme poems appeared in “Chest,” “Edgz,” “Nomad’s Choir,” “Pegasus,” “Writer’s Bloc,” and “Wordgathering.” Burns won the 2009 Inglis House prize for a poet with disabilities. He was nominated for a Pushcart award in 2010. His poetry serves as a proof of life.

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Damaged, Roselyn Perez

Those pieces which remain unshattered,
Gleam with a brilliance that dazzles the eye,
But, saddens the heart, eats the spirit,
Like the firelight that must slowly die,
Even as its passion burns,

Yet this broken thing, this bird with one working wing,
Seeks to soar, smash through the latched door,
As one of fate’s many battered children,
It’s compromised, but not quite lost,

Every scar a point of pride,
A high mark on the test of time,
Dark horse’s universe in its prime,
Still waiting for the truth to shine through,
Life, imperfect, avant garde.

Bio: Roselyn Perez is one of six siblings, three of whom, including herself, suffer from retinitis pigmentosa. She is the first in her family to attend a University and is currently studying at California State University, Northridge. Her poems have been featured in “Eclipse journal,” and “Think journal.”

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Dancin’ Up Main Street, Ria Meade

He is not Fred Astaire.
I’m not Ginger Rogers.
He is Spencer, I am his partner.
He has four legs, a slick-looking black coat,
elegance and rhythm.
I have only two legs, one a smidge short,
much taller,
can’t see a damn thing.
And everyday we do a dance routine,
up Main Street.

I don a bright frock, his harness straps on,
my left hand grips the handle.
His gentle tug leads me to the dance floor,
Main Street.

Our background musical score –
Horns blaring, jackhammers pounding,
gears grinding, teenagers rapping
energy vibrating.

Four months of practice,
I struggle to learn Spencer’s footwork,
new partner
new style.

When gliding from block to block,
intent on sensing each other’s moves,
I feel a waltz.
Being it Spencer and me,
probably, a visual boogie-woogie.
Our steps often vary, feet missing puddles
with jazzy zigzagging.

Spence takes the lead, I follow.
We have purpose, independence,
happy hearts,
happy feet.
Arriving home, we bow, thank one another.
Give a kiss,
get a lick.

Thinking of our dance –
up and down and around our town –
he *IS* my Fred Astaire!

Bio: Ria Meade lost her sight at 27, half her lifetime ago. For the past three years, she has attempted to chronicle this experience in poetry, especially those of her 27 years with 5 guide dogs.

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The Lesson, Darragh O’Riain

“Now that wasn’t all that hard, was it?”
Now if she just knew the half of it.

Awakened by a rapping at my door
Taken from me this day the norm
Stumbling I trail along the walls to the door
Eyes plundered from sight months before

Greetings from a teacher, from a friend, greetings from a Godsend.
Reluctance from a student, from a cripple, irritant I can’t mend.
Hands shaken and accolades shared
but its for this day I am unprepared

Elbow in my hand she guides me to my chair.
As I trace her arm down to where my back rests fair
She tells me of my new life to come and how it shall be
But right now I can’t see anything so what’s the point for me

Venturing to the car as sounds creep in I hear the days battles
What awaits for me out there but chatters
My small view on a world so expansive
No conformation of the steps ahead of me

In her car we travel into the depths of hell as my head begins to swirl
The window lowered, my subconscious absorbs the speaking world
Approaching our destination from circles traveled and many stops passed
Coming to rest in a place unfamiliar like the memories to come ever last

I step out from the car into this new jungle, this new planet
Unfold my cane using two tap skim to fan it
Back and fourth in step to find my shoreline
Barking dogs, speeding cars, footfall of people are combined

I pause to listen to the world speak to me
As I hear a new way that is to be me
Wall of cars in the street stampeding by like a herd of wild beasts
Crossing signals chirp-ping high above on light poles
like birds in the Amazon singing in rain forest trees from above.

She stands beside me and says this to me
“Now that wasn’t all that bad, was it?”

I begin my trek through this jungle amongst the trees and wild beasts
Carving pathways and ruts to follow a path unseen
Tromping herds to my left and mountain sides on my right
And it is my dime tip telling me where to go

Pedestrians walking by in line in pace with life
like soldiers marching to the neighboring kingdom
looking to us as though we were an oddity
not speaking, not giving away our obvious blindness and disability.
Rather a commodity and a new ability

Tapping sounds off sides of objects
Echoing down tunnels and off deadly cliff edges
Wind gusts breaking through openings and shadow sounds hiding in the dark
Marching soldiers gawking in awe as I alone conquer a new kingdom

An internal uprising to rebel against vision
My ears lead my feet as my cane makes the split decision
A root exposed in the pathway and my feet graze over
Curb edges keep me in line as I carve my own path

Parking meters say hi as I pass and light poles hum their tunes
I come to the curb-cut and its domed dots of declaration
Wind of cars in stride intersected by crossing sounds of vehicles
“I did it, I made it one city block.” I finally proclaimed this.

“Now that wasn’t all that hard, was it?”
Now if she just knew the half of it.

Bio: Darragh O’Riain has always been considered a jack of all trades but writing short stories and poetry was his calling. After losing his sight in 2003, he sharpened his skills and focused on his poetry.

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Frankenstein, Inc., Manny Colver

This is how the story starts,
Curious creatures without hearts
Or souls came forth with rich flowcharts,
To dwell amongst the people.

Birthed in thought by men of law;
No need to fear; we’ll tame them all;
We’ll cut them down they grow too tall,
And so came corporations.

These creatures seemed benign at first,
for profit was their only thirst.
We couldn’t see how we’d be cursed,
to let them shape our lives.

We controlled them after all,
We wouldn’t let them break the law;
Upon infractions that we saw,
we’d yank their corporate charters.

All that sounded simply fine,
but most got chipped away with time,
The whole thing turned upon a dime,
and soon all reins were gone.

They grew in number and in size,
while thirst for power filled their eyes;
They bought off all opposing cries,
and stole the rights of men.

And with those rights they lobbied hard
For laws that dealt them winning cards;
and with their money paid regards
to those who did their bidding.

They fed on others of their kind,
cannibals, but that was fine
as long as they stayed ‘way from mine,
and I kept my situation.

Their push for global markets: strong;
They searched out labor for a song
from Eastern Europe to Hong Kong,
wherever work was cheapest.

And now I think of Frankenstein,
for one of them acquired mine;
I’m on the unemployment line;
My job has fled the country.

I’m told it’s time we shared our wealth,
but those on top keep theirs by stealth;
a poor design for social health
when winners take it all.

While some may gripe and others fuss,
We mourn the death of anti-trust;
Our own creations now rule us!
Have mercy on us, oh Mighty Ones.

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Palettes of Memory, James Ruane

Wish I could dive into Monet’s Lily Pads
Feel the color green, knowing that it’s good

Swim in the brightly vivid mind of a master of color
To hold red, crush it in my hands, and enhance the smell

Vibrant yellow in my veins, changing how I remember his world
Jump into contoured concrete haystacks

Wash my skin with sidewalk chalk
Stare at long glorious sunrises, not afraid of losing it again

Reach up and dip my hand through light, taste the son
Dance on copper starry nights

Wrap myself in purple and drink nobility in
Climb out of the word abstraction and switch the letters around

Smearing my skin with pink electric light
Crawl back into my world and lose it all, all over again

No more kaleidoscopes of brilliant ocean waves
See less than ultraviolet

Bio: James Ruane holds Fine Arts degrees in creative writing and philosophy from the University of Toledo. He writes fantasy and science fiction as well as poetry; and has four short stories ready for publication. He has benefitted from workshops with accomplished fiction authors and poets. His disability is visual impairment due to an auto accident twelve years ago. Contact him at captainmagicpants@Bex.net.

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V. SEASONAL MOVES

The Empty Nest Halloween, memoir, Kate Chamberlin

I came away from the neighbor’s house clutching my bag of goodies. I clasped my Dad’s hand as we walked to the next house.

I wanted to be a princess that year, but my mother said my plump, 5-year old body would look better as a ghost. Instead of a gown, I put on a warm winter jacket. She put a sheet over my head, trying to line up my eyes with the holes. The holes never did stay over my eyes.

Strange creatures were all around me that Halloween night, so long ago. The hub-bub of motions and sounds were unsettling. I heard footsteps come running up behind me. A big boy jumped in front of me.

He punched my arm. It made me drop my bag of candy.

“Hey, Dummy,” my brother said, “Our Dad is going the other way.”

The stranger let go of my hand muttering something about how all little ghosts look the same. He reached for another ghost’s out stretched hand and vanished.

My brother dragged me back to our real Dad. I was scared and mortified. Halloween was never the same for me after that.

It wasn’t until the first year my husband and I were married that I started to enjoy Halloween. We went to a party, wearing costumes we had made. They consisted of cardboard panels painted to look like Hershey chocolate bars. Mine said, “Hershey Chocolate Plain.” Yes, his said, “Hershey Chocolate with Nuts.”

As each of our children began to go trick-or-treating, they wore a little rabbit outfit made from a warm pj sleeper as their first costume. Their second Halloween costume was a clown outfit. Usually I put just a touch of makeup on their face instead of a mask.

I always dressed up in a brightly colored caftan and went as a “good witch.” Once I labeled my witch’s hat “Witch.” My son’s hat said “Son of a Witch.”

As soon as possible, I started the children on making their own costumes. One of my all time favorite costumes was one our son, Will, made for himself. He took two large, cardboard circles and painted them a rich, dark brown. He wore a white shirt and brown pants. In his mind, he looked just like an Oreo cookie.

Our second son, Paul, carried out a museum class theme one year by re-using the cardboard turtle shell for his costume. It was slow going around the neighborhood that year!

My nervousness about Halloween resurfaced when the boys were old enough to go trick-or-treating on their own. I admonished them to stay on our street, but, I tried to make staying home to pass out the candy more fun and attractive than going house to house.

Eventually, we experienced our first Halloween as empty nesters. My husband and I sat at our dining room table which is near the front door. As was our custom, we’d removed the glass insert from the storm door to serve as a pass through window.

The first treaters were several large teenaged boys around 5 pm. The main flush of beggars went from 6:30 p.m. to about 8:30 pm. The last trick-or-treaters were several large teenaged boys at 8:45 pm. Come to think about it, they sounded vaguely familiar! I wonder how many times they came through.

We had no hassles about costumes, tampered with candy, or curfews this year. We happily answered the doorbell to put candy in each and every bag or hand.

As our neighbor’s spooky music swirled through the cold air, we laughed and teased the children and adults who came to our door. We stuffed ourselves with Snickers and Peanut Butter Cups to our hearts’ delights.

I think Halloween has become fun again. We’re just not going to tell our grown children how we ended the evening: sipping chamomile tea to soothe our aching tummies.

Bio: Kate Chamberlin, M.A., became blind when her children were young. Her teaching career continues through her Study Buddy Tutoring Service, Feely Cans and Sniffy Jars Program, and popular lectures. She is a published children’s author, Anglican educator, newspaper columnist, and proud grandmother. Visit her website at http://www.katechamberlin.com.

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Apples, poetry, DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Days are warm and nights are cool.
It’s apple time again.
Wine sap, Jonathon, Gala,
Granny Smith, Gravenstein,
Red and Golden Delicious,
Fuji and Arkansas Black;
Sweet and tart, red yellow and green,
They weigh down the branches.

I fill my hands with pleasure,
Pile them in a basket.
I tuck them in a lunch box,
Glossy globes of treasure.
A present for the teacher,
A treat for a pony.
Not even Eve could resist
Savoring this delight.

Diced in a Jell-O salad,
Combined in countless ways.
Apple butter, apple sauce,
Apple cider and pie;
Baked apples and fried apples,
Apple fritters and cake.
Holding harvest memories,
When the winter winds blow.

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The Other Side of the Glass Wall, memoir, Deon P. Lyons

I sat at the gate waiting for a flight from Bangor to Florida on a cold, snowy day in 2007. There was an undercurrent of excitement about the upcoming trip to warmer weather. The huge windows overlooking the airfield gave me a view of serious snowfall. As I thought about the sunshine that awaited me at my relatives’ home, I noticed a huge plane landing and approaching the adjacent gate. It has always amazed me the way something so damn big can jump off the ground or swoop down like these planes do.

While we were waiting for our flight to be announced, several people started walking toward the wall of glass that separated our two gates. When I looked through the wall, I saw men and women in uniform exiting the plane. Some driving force from inside or outside or somewhere told me to get myself over there. I joined the crowd, and as we got closer to the wall and I realized what this meant, I felt proud as hell.

They were all dressed in fatigues, rugged boots and backpacks. As soon as I could get close enough to touch the wall, I put my hand up and touched the glass. A few of the men and women on the other side reached out and placed their hands on mine as they walked by. I could feel their energy pass from them to me. It was incredible! I was all choked up inside and started to cry.

I can’t explain how “American” I felt at that moment. It’s a scene and a feeling I will keep forever. I mouthed the words, “Thank you.” and they mouthed the same words back to me. I had trouble breathing. The pride, the passion, and the gratitude that they were still alive made me humble. I stood there, held in place by smiles and by the rapid beating of my heart. The emotion just pumped through my bloodstream.

When the line finally passed me, I realized there was a welcoming group waiting for them. Yes, they still had another flight to take. They were Tennessee National Guard troops who would be home with their families tonight. These “gate angels” meet our service people at every airport. I was glad to know that such a regular supply of praise and support is always offered to our bravest. I saw joy and contentment on the faces of the welcomers and the people who had been away for eighteen months. I felt so damn good knowing they were back where they belonged; and I could only imagine the depth of the loss for the families whose people should have been on that flight.

The swell of passion I felt on that day was love, hope, thanks, and faith all bundled together. I never felt like this when I was younger; never thought about the sacrifices that have, over the years, contributed to safety and security for me here at home. I have choices I might not have without those heroes on the other side of the glass wall. They give, and they give, and then they give some more. When I write or talk about that day, the feeling comes back, and I find myself unable to express it with the depth it deserves.

As we pay tribute on Veterans Day and the other patriotic holidays, I praise the courage, morn the sacrifices, and nearly burst with pride. I remember that cold day in Maine and those returning troops. My journey was the only thing on my mind until I saw beyond the glass wall and reached out and touched their world for a moment.

Many of my relatives have served and are serving today. A few years back I received a picture of my nephew, Michael. He is standing beside a huge military vehicle in Iraq. He looks just like the strong marine that he is. He is a man I’m proud to call family.

I thank God that I live in this country. I am lucky, and I can’t imagine living any other way. I don’t take my life for granted; I can’t afford to; none of us really can.

The USA owes you men and women in uniform everything we hold dear, and we must never forget it. God bless you!

Bio: Deon Lyons lives in the central Maine town of Clinton along with his wife of thirty years. Deon worked for the past twenty five years as a Regional Sales Rep, until June of 2010 when he suddenly lost his vision due to lingering complications from cancer as an infant. Deon is currently involved in a vocational rehabilitation program, and is also learning many forms of assistive technology in hopes of re-entering the workforce. Along with a lifelong passion for writing, Deon has many hobbies, but they all play second fiddle to family.

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Perfect Pitch, poetry, Ria Meade

Yesterday,
in a picturesque village
my brother, Tom, and I
walked the same path,
seasonal foliage
crunching underfoot,
where I caught that glimpse
thirty years ago.

This memory is like a relative,
expected, welcomed with autumn,
though not a stranger
in other seasons.

Fading vision captured
ancient maples’ shining tips,
their children about to leave.
Sun struck a match behind
each brown, red,
golden leaf.

The light’s brilliance
compares to a voice in song,
hitting that illusive note,
stunning by its clarity.
Autumn’s harmony of color,
play of light,
so clear,
so heartbreakingly clear.

The next moment
my unsure sight missed the curb.
The view shattered.

This glimpse,
I cannot lose,
cannot keep.
That paradox haunts.

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Her First Turkey, fiction, Abbie Johnson Taylor

The dining room table was covered with a white cloth. Linen napkins adorned the eight place settings that each contained a plate, silverware, and a glass. Two of the glasses were plastic and had milk in them. The other six wine glasses were empty. A bottle of wine and cork screw were placed in the center of the table.

Pat admired her handiwork with her limited vision and hoped her mother-in-law would approve. This was her first Thanksgiving with her in-laws, and she willed everything to go smoothly. With a sigh, she sauntered to the doorway and called, “Okay, dinner’s ready.”

They all trooped in, her husband, Steve, his parents, Harry and Lee Ann, his brother and sister-in-law, Rob and Linda, and their two children, Jayson, eight, and Ella, five. As Pat hurried to the kitchen to bring out the platters of food, she heard her mother-in-law say, “All right everyone, this is Pat’s first turkey. I don’t want anyone to say a word if it’s dry.”

“Do I have to eat the turkey if it’s dry?” asked Jayson.

Linda appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Can I help?” she asked.

“Sure,” answered Pat with a sigh of relief. “Take the turkey to Steve so he can start carving it.” She carefully removed the electric knife from a nearby drawer and placed it on the platter next to the bird. “Then you can come back and get the potatoes and gravy. I’ll get the stuffing, salad, and cranberry sauce. Oh, I still need to take the rolls out of the oven.”

“Take your time,” said Linda, placing a reassuring hand on Pat’s shoulder. “This all looks wonderful.”

After the turkey had been cut and the wine opened, and all the food was served, Pat was relieved to hear the satisfying sounds of cutlery scraping against plates. But still too nervous to eat, she stared at her food. “Um, this turkey is nice and juicy,” said Lee Ann.

“I knew it would be,” said Pat with a smile. She picked up her fork and took a bite.

“Have you cooked a turkey before?” asked Lee Ann. “I’d think that would be hard for someone who can’t see.”

“This stuffing is delicious,” said Linda. “I’d love the recipe.”

The room fell silent, and Pat could feel everyone’s eyes on her. She didn’t want her in-laws to know that she hadn’t prepared the meal, but now that someone had asked for a recipe, what could she say? She didn’t know the first thing about making stuffing. Her mother had never shared her recipes with her.

She took a deep breath and said, “To be honest, I’m not much of a cook. The turkey, stuffing, potatoes and gravy, salad, and rolls came from Albertson’s. The cranberry sauce came out of a can. I ordered the pumpkin pie from Schwan’s.”

“Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!” came Ella’s sing song voice from the opposite end of the table, breaking the tension. “We sang that at school yesterday, and I told everyone we were going over the river and through the woods to Uncle Steve and Aunt Pat’s house, but it doesn’t fit into the song.”

Everyone giggled, and Pat said, “You’re right, sweetie. It doesn’t, and I’m sorry I missed your program yesterday. I had to work.”

“That’s okay,” said Ella. “I really like your turkey.”

“I do too,” said Jayson. “It’s not dry at all.”

“The potatoes are great,” said Steve. “I think they’re just like Mom’s.”

“Oh you,” said Lee Ann with a laugh.

“I like the salad,” said Rob.

“The rolls are wonderful,” said Harry. “Excuse me. I’m going to have another.”

“This was a great idea,” said Linda. “Maybe the next time I host a holiday dinner, I’ll do the same thing. It would save a lot of time.”

Lee Ann cleared her throat. “Linda, surely you realize that nothing compares to a home cooked meal. However, this is rather nice. Pat, I’m sure it would have been next to impossible to prepare a meal like this from scratch when you can’t see.”

There it was again. Pat’s mother-in-law expected less of her because she was visually impaired. Maybe she should have tried to cook a turkey. She’d seen plenty of articles on cooking in Dialogue and other magazines for the blind written by sightless cooks. In fact, there had been step by step instructions on how to cook a turkey with no sight.

The rest of the family continued eating and chatting as if nothing were wrong. But Pat put down her fork and hung her head, as shame washed over her. Her appetite was gone.

“What are you smiling about?” asked Steve a month later, as they were driving to Rob and Linda’s house for Christmas dinner.

“Promise me you won’t say a word,” said Pat. “I told Linda I wouldn’t tell anyone, not even you.”

“You and Linda can trust me. My lips are sealed. Now spill.”

“Okay, Linda ordered the prime rib, twice baked potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, and apple pie from Warehouse Market.”

Steve burst into loud, uproarious laughter. “Mom’s gonna be pissed.”

“Not if she doesn’t know,” said Pat. “If she or anyone else asks for a recipe, Linda will promise to e-mail it to them and send them a recipe she finds online. I wish I’d thought of that last month.”

“I do too. I didn’t think Linda would ask you for that stuffing recipe. It was pretty good, though. But I think this Jell-O salad you’re bringing is going to be a hit.” He tapped the Tupperware container she held securely in her lap.

“I figured if my friend Jackie could make this recipe with no sight at all, I could make it with some vision.”

“I think you’re right, honey.”

“If anybody asks for the recipe, I have it right here.” She tapped her pants pocket that held the printed recipe. “I saved it on the computer so if more than one person wants a copy, I can e-mail it.”

“Good for you,” said Steve. “That talking computer of yours sure works wonders.”

“I downloaded a book from the National Library Service for the blind called ‘Cooking without Looking.’ Maybe next year, I’ll feel more confident about cooking a Thanksgiving turkey.”

“Maybe we could do it together. It’s about time I learned how to cook.”

Bio: Abbie Johnson Taylor’s novel, We Shall Overcome, was published in July of 2007 by iUniverse. Her poems have appeared in Voicings from the High Country and Serendipity Poets Journal, her stories in Emerging Voices and Disability Studies Quarterly, her creative nonfiction material in SageScript and Christmas in the Country. She is visually impaired and lives in Sheridan, Wyoming, with her totally blind husband Bill, who is partially paralyzed as a result of two strokes. Please visit her Web site at http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com.

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Learning to Skate, poetry, Kathleen Winfield

On the ice I glide and swizzle and stop
And spin, tentatively, both arms stretched forth
In a ballet gesture, so graceful, short
Of perfection, yet joyously I hop,
Almost fall, saved by helicopter arms.
Ice bright white, instructors in contrast black.
I see the frost, I skim around and come back.
Backwards swizzles, stronger legs, no alarms
For my fears have gone. Pump the circle, quick
As an otter in talismanic dance
Of cold north where sturdy villagers glance
At aurora sky — Back to learning: pick
A next step. Imagine crossovers, leaps
And axles, flying skating in my sleep.

Bio: Kathleen Winfield has an M.A. in English Literature from Temple University in Philadelphia. Sighted until aged twenty-three, she is blind with some residual vision. She is a singer and an artist, working in clay sculpture, painting, and charcoal drawing. She lives with her husband, who is blind, in northern Colorado.

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A Prickly Tree, memoir, Robert Feinstein with Marilyn Brandt Smith

It didn’t look like the trees I sometimes touched in the park or walked beneath. The leaves didn’t rustle or crackle. They weren’t really leaves at all, but more like brushes–soft yet prickly beneath my nine-year-old hands.

“What’s this, a nice Jewish boy like you getting so much pleasure from a Christmas tree?” Aunt Ruthie asked without a hint of understanding.

My mother was the “rebellious disloyal Goya (non-Jewish) mom” according to my uncle Kal Rubin. She bought her blind son a Christmas tree and decorated it with glittery glass ornaments, lacey tinsel, and a light which gave off warmth and probably a nice color too. It made our Brooklyn apartment smell like I imagined a forest would smell, fresh and alive.

Children at school, mostly a Christian group, talked and sang about their holidays. I knew about sledding and loved to play in the snow.

We celebrated Hanukkah; ate our traditional “latkes” (potato pancakes); and I loved to spin the dreidel and receive my presents. We lit the menorah, but we were not a totally observant family.

The idea of an indoor tree fascinated me, and my mother had the courage to get one for me when I kept asking questions. After all, I couldn’t see one on TV or in books, and it was too risky to show me one in public. She walked a thin line with neighbors, some of whom were holocaust survivors, who tended to tie Christianity to the bad things Germans had done in World War II. Acknowledging Christmas was defying our cultural tradition. My grandmother used a very uncomplimentary term in Yiddish when she chose to say something about Christmas.

I could listen to Christmas carols on the radio occasionally, but we couldn’t buy a record of them. I loved the sound of “Silent Night,” although I didn’t learn what the words actually meant for Christians until I was much older. There was a little girl at school named Mary. She taught me the “Hail Mary” Catholic prayer. My parents were shocked when I proudly recited it at home. They didn’t tell me not to talk to or play with Mary any more, they just told me not to say the prayer. They realized that acceptance did not come easily for a blind child in public school.

In our building the adults clicked their tongues, “sis a shandah” (What a shame) they said about the curse of blindness on this nice family. Their children followed the parents’ lead and left me alone most of the time. I learned quickly to judge people according to their willingness to be my friend, and not because they were Jewish, family, or neighbors.

It’s been fun to tell my Jewish and non-Jewish friends that I had a Christmas tree the year I was nine. We didn’t treat December 25th like a special day, but about a week beforehand my mother took me to a store to meet Santa Claus. My curiosity was satisfied when I sat on his lap and felt his beard.

“And what do you want Santa Claus to bring you for Christmas, Robert?” he asked. That reference didn’t bother me at all.

“I want a big top that spins and makes musical sounds for my present.”

Of course we didn’t tell the Goldbergs and the Cohens or my aunts and uncles about that trip, but on one of the Hanukkah nights I received my big spinning top.

Through the years I have held fast to my conviction that the way people treat a person says more about their value than any cultural, geographical, or social group ties. When I was studying in France as a young man, I formed a close friendship with a young German named Peter. We took walks together and talked. He could understand the Yiddish I had learned from my mother and aunts gossiping “calacutchka.” My neighbors from childhood would have thought me a traitor.

My mother’s courage that Christmas of my childhood, was a testament to me that true loyalty and love toward another human being sometimes requires taking chances, and not always being understood. When a person is kind to me, accepts me for who I am, I let them know that it means a lot to me. I know there’s a famous book and movie about a tree that grew in Brooklyn, but in my mind, that tree I came home to on one chilly December afternoon in Brooklyn was, as they would say in Yiddish if they dared, “michiah,” a really special pleasure.

Bio: Robert Feinstein grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, and his Master’s from Middlebury College in Vermont. Robert studied and worked in France, then returned to New York for a twenty-year career as a language teacher for children with English as a second language. He speaks French fluently, and has conversational background in Hebrew and Yiddish.

Robert was a volunteer telephone communicator for the deaf community. He learned rudimentary sign language and became friends with several deaf-blind individuals. He researched the life and writings of Helen Keller.

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Witnesses, fiction, Ellen Fritz

“Look at that,” said the Roman centurion’s grey stallion, Darius, to his neighbor as they stood fastened to the tie rail of the inn. “So many people coming from every direction for this taxing business �, and just look at that!”

At last he had the attention of the mare, Rebecca, who was standing in the field of the inn adjoining the tie rail. She stared sympathetically at the small thin donkey with the heavily pregnant woman on its back. The donkey did not seem to suffer under the weight while all around the other animals were dripping with sweat.

“That poor woman,” she said knowingly as her soft brown eyes misted over in sympathy. She marveled at the courage of the woman: “Seems as if she’s going to give birth very soon. She really has guts to travel under such conditions! Why are your owners so ruthless to force everyone in this land to report to his or her town of birth, and that at such short notice? Then they are given such a short time in which to do it, too!”

“You are just an emotional old mare. It’s just because the woman is Jewish like your master that you carry on and on about her. Besides, probably the baby is going to be a boy which means it’s one more for my master and Caesar Augustus to keep in check.” Said the grey horse, and seeing this gentle mare quailing at his crudeness, he said less harshly: “Oh, I’m sorry. Of course I’m sorry for her, too. I’m a warhorse you know and think politically; whereas, you are the most exquisite little Arabian mare, and so noble to feel for the woman.”

“See that little donkey? There is definitely something unusual about him,” remarked Akid, the centurion’s greyhound. “He’s not sweating at all and his ears are moving to and fro like that of a fresh horse.”

“I can see he’s walking briskly – hmmm, I see what you mean about his ears, but I’m sure he must be sweating,” argued the stallion.

“I tell you now there is not a drop of sweat on that beast!” said the hound irritably as he walked to a shady spot.

Rebecca wandered off to the far side of the little field which she shared with two milk cows also belonging to her owner, the innkeeper.

The horse and the two cows stood together under a tree, munching hay, which their owner, the inn keeper, had thrown over the fence early that morning as it was winter and grazing was sparse.

“Meow: I can tell you something.” Said the lean cat, who lived in the inn-yard just outside the kitchen.

“The inn is so full that single people have to share rooms, and still people are coming in from all over. The whole town is overflowing: almost every house has been turned into an inn in order to accommodate all the visitors. And where do you think are the centurion and his officers? Inside the inn, drinking and eyeing the pretty country girls!”

“That could cause trouble. They are supposed to keep an eye on the people and make sure that they do not cheat or fight. I was wondering why all those stunning horses were standing at the tie rail,” said Olive, a heavily pregnant cow, as she lay down to chew her cud. “I know just how that woman must be feeling,” she mumbled to herself.

Suddenly, Rebecca threw her head up and prepared for an argument as an exquisite Arabian mare was released into the paddock. She looked at the newcomer, her whole posture challenging, but the mare was too thirsty to care and walked straight past to drink at the water trough. As she shook herself, she sprayed the other animals with sweat.

Rebecca gave her a dirty look and lifted her upper lip, being too preoccupied with what was happening in the inn courtyard to concern herself further with the newcomer. There seemed to be a heated discussion between the inn keeper, the owner of the sweaty mare and the people with the donkey.

“What’s the problem with your owner? He looks like a real trouble maker,” said Rebecca to the new mare. “Oh, sorry I’m so rude; my name is Rebecca and I belong to the innkeeper.”

“My name is Vashti and my master is a rich merchant. He is not a very kind man. He also beats me. We got here just before that couple with the donkey. Although the inn is full, the innkeeper made sure my master would get the best room. The people with the donkey have nowhere to go and they’re arguing about it,” she said and sighed.

The stallion, Darius, neighed angrily and tossed his head. He was calling the mares and they walked over.

“That’s shameful.” Darius chipped in from the tie rail: “Both your owners are heartless. The innkeeper just took a couple with two children out of a nice room and told them to use the attic. They are very upset as it is too small for them, and your nasty owner,” Darius looked at Vashti, “Just demands this and that and he just insulted that poor pregnant woman to!”

“It’s because the merchant is a Roman,” said Rebecca angrily.

“Don’t worry,” called the cheerful little donkey: “My people are going to sleep in the stable: One of the stalls in there is bigger than the small rooms in the inn.”

“How do you know? You have not seen the stable yet,” asked Rebecca.

“I told him,” growled Akid, looking at the door to see whether his master was coming.

“Are you also being put here in the field?” asked Rebecca, looking at the donkey.

“Yes, but I do know my manners so you two mares do not have to flatten your ears at me.”

Vashti went to roll in the sand in the paddock and then walked to the trough again.

“There’s blood on your mouth: the bit, I suppose, and aren’t those whip marks on your flanks?” sympathized Rebecca.

“Oh, that’s nothing. At least I will rest as my master will be spending a few days here.”

“You look happy and fresh. I suppose your people live near her,.” said Rebecca to the donkey called Bilam.

“Actually not. We’re all the way from Nazareth. We have been pushing the pace a bit. My lady, Mary, will be having her baby any time and we just had to complete the journey before she went into labor. I tell you, there is something strange, wondrous, maybe even holy, about that baby, but exactly what, I don’t know,” he said.

“But you should be dead tired, thirsty and full of sweat, yet it looks as if you just had some oats and you do not have a drop of sweat on you. Good grief, you look better groomed than any of those soldiers’ horses over there!” said Vashti.

“Don’t ask me why but I feel so good I could run a race now; and, yes, I know that I look and feel good. What amazes me is that my lady rider was as light as a feather. Every time she stroked me I felt more energetic and walked faster. Eventually even my master said that I was going too fast for his tired legs!”

If ever animals smiled, it was those who listened to the donkey that day.

The cat came out again with a wicked glint in his eyes and said: “The latest news is that the pregnant woman and her husband are going to use the biggest stall in the stable. The merchant’s mare cannot stay out, so with only five stalls available some of you are going to sleep outside.”

“Who is staying outside?” asked Rebecca.

“The sheep, who normally sleep in the big partition, are staying out tonight. They will be joining a flock out in that large field to the east. Those shepherds will watch over them.”

“So it will be us and the cows inside, and I assume you will sleep outside, Bilam,” Rebecca summarized, then continued: “This could be interesting. Just think how fascinating it will be to see a human giving birth. We have seen one another giving birth, but a human, wow!”

“My udder is very big, in case the woman needs milk.” Tana, the quiet white cow, added.

While the couple was moving in, the innkeeper’s daughter was preparing the animals’ feed and readying the pail for milking Tana. A white dove flew up to them and perched on a branch right above the cat.

“Those who sleep in the stable tonight will be the most blessed animals on earth and you, donkey, will be the ancestor of another, even more blessed donkey than yourself.” The dove flew off towards the stable.

“You did not try and catch that dove!” said Rebecca to the cat.

“Oh, I just didn’t feel like catching him.” He replied without admitting that a great love for the white dove had overtaken him from the moment it had landed right above his head. If he told them about his experience, they would tease him for years to come.

Darius was looking at the group of animals under the trees and deep in his wisdom-filled Arabian soul he sensed something of grandeur: both the mares were pure Arabian, and both had the wisdom of ages gone by in their eyes; the white cow seemed to be in some kind of trance, while the other was much too quiet for the hour just before milking and feeding.

The donkey seemed quietly satisfied. He just went about eating here and there, and when he looked up, the expression in his eyes was so peaceful, it made the stallion nervous. Donkeys were either lazy and naughty or greedy and argumentative. But what really baffled him was seeing the white dove almost standing on the cat’s head and the cat just lying there ever so relaxed.

There had been a short sharp downpour and now, after the rain both mares were pure white. He himself was white too. The thought suddenly struck him: odd, so many white animals, all in one place! It was unusually quiet around the inn and the stable. Even his irritation at having to wait for the centurion had gone as he drooped his head and dozed in the last rays of the sun.

In the stable, the cows and horses were fed and given an ample helping of hay for the night. Rebecca and Tana kept on looking over the partitions at the people.

Every now and then either Mary, the woman, or her husband, Joseph, would stroke them gently and thank them for letting them share the stable.

“As though we had any say in it,” grumbled Rebecca, but her eyes were gentle.

Vashti knew … she knew that deep down Rebecca knew too. Something major was about to happen. Something which man and beast had been waiting for for millennia.

“Their stable has double the amount of straw as ours. I wonder if the lady will give birth tonight. Will they also need to throw the dirty straw out like they do with us when we calf or foal?” remarked Tana, who had not eaten much and who could not take her eyes off her human neighbors.

“Joseph wants to go for help but Mary says that she knows that everything will be alright and that the holy baby’s birth will not hurt her much,” Rebecca whispered to Vashti who stood in the end stall.

There came a soft sound of rustling feathers from the rafters and they saw the white dove sit with his wings spread as if in protection.

“Kneel all of you, kneel to honor the holy child,” said the dove.

And, obediently and fearlessly, the animals in the stable knelt.

Through the wooden slats of the partitions, they saw the Holy baby being born while they knelt, and heard him give his first little cry.
Although the white cow and horse on either side of the baby’s stall did not know it, their eyes held an expression of infinite peace and love.

“What is it? I could not see from this angle,” said Rebecca.

“It will be a boy, a very holy boy.” said Vashti from the end stall from where she could see nothing and nobody argued as her voice rang with certain knowledge.

“Their water pail is almost empty and surely they will need more water to drink and clean up.” said a worried Tana.

As if Joseph understood what she had said he leaned over her partition to scoop some water from her bucket. A joy, that this special man had scooped water from her bucket, made Tana lift her head and low quietly.

From a corner, Joseph took some clean hay and filled the manger while Mary wrapped the baby in cloths, and carefully laid him there.

The humans were quiet now; the baby asleep with a faint smile on his face; his mother Mary lying on some thick straw also fast asleep. Joseph had covered her with his own cloak and laid an extra layer of straw over it to make his sweet wife warm and comfortable.

“There’s one devil of a din outside – singing and music! Goodness this is scary,” said Rebecca, blowing nervously through her nostrils, keeping her eyes on the sleeping baby. Somehow all these strange happenings had something to do with him.

Just then the baby opened his eyes and gazed into hers, smiling. She almost lost her balance as she became giddy from the sudden feeling of peace that came over her.

The entire stable was filled with his warm presence and each animal was momentarily wrapped in a soft, hazy white glow, which filled them with infinite peace.

Then there was the sound of approaching footsteps. Three shepherds entered quietly. They looked afraid and slightly bewildered but, as they looked at the child in the manger, the fear on their faces was replaced with joy and peace. “That din must have been angels telling these shepherds about the baby,” sighed Vashti reverently.

Darius woke up with a start and looked at the other horses in the military lines. He had just had a dream about a man who would, in just over thirty years, pay the greatest tax for all mankind. He wondered whether this man would be very rich. Then he threw his head up in alarm as a white dove settled on the tie rail at his head.

“The tax that the man who had just been born will pay will not be with money but holy blood,” the dove revealed.

The horse and dove looked each other in the eye as an understanding of deeper things brought peace to their minds.

Bio: Ellen Fritz, visually impaired since birth, lives on a small holding on the East Rand of Johannesburg, South Africa, with her husband, also visually impaired, and two other visually impaired friends. She writes stories about animals, as told from the perspective of the animals. She has spent most of her life in close contact with animals: as a trainer, commercial breeder, competitive horse rider and pet owner. Although some of her stories are fictional, most of the incidents and events really happened. She can be contacted at ellen@mr-music.co.za.

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Ocean on a December Evening, poetry, Carole Rose

A December evening, long past sunset,
I stand on the boardwalk, shivering.
The southerly wind is biting and relentless.
Grains of sand sting my face and find their way into my wind-blown hair.
All around me, the ocean roars.
A young man huddles in a small tollbooth
Hoping tourists will stop and pay fifty cents to explore the long pier
Stretching far beyond the shoreline.
No one comes.
The boardwalk is cold, lonely, deserted.
I walked the beach earlier today,
Warmed by gentle breezes and brilliant sunshine.
And now,
White-capped waves tumble endlessly over one another
And crash upon the shore.
The ocean seems angry,
Angry because it cannot outwit the forces of nature.
It, too, is vulnerable to winter’s harshness.
I leave the boardwalk.
I am so very cold.
From deep within, I feel a sense of sadness,
Longing,
Loss,
And yes, loneliness.
If only for a brief time
I, too, have been touched by winter’s chill.

Author’s Note:
I wrote this poem in December 2010 while visiting our son and his family in Florida. Christmas is very special to me, but the past year had been difficult. My husband’s devastating illness and subsequent hearing loss had left us exhausted and frightened. Our son and his wife were experiencing a stressful period in their marriage. I had lost a dear friend. I was excited about my upcoming retirement after forty-seven rewarding years as a librarian. At the same time, I was anxious about life after work.

I enjoy being near the ocean, so on an afternoon in late December, my husband and I walked the beach. The refreshing breeze and warm sun lifted my spirits, and I smiled. However, when we returned to the beach that evening, the mood had changed completely. The blustery wind, stinging sand, the virtually empty boardwalk, and the angry, white-capped waves, shattered my short-lived happiness. I was once again overwhelmed by fear, loneliness, loss, and longing. I returned to the motel and immediately wrote this poem which, for me, marked the beginning of my emotional healing.

Bio: Since 1965, Carole Rose has been employed as a librarian with the Indiana Talking Book and Braille Library. She writes the quarterly patron newsletter, promotional materials, and articles for other blindness-related publications. Carole is involved in outreach programs, and coordinates children’s services, as well as the largest vision fair in the midwest. In 1995, Carole self-published a Christmas memoir: A CHRISTMAS SCRAPBOOK: A DAUGHTER’S GIFT, and has contributed articles to the Ziegler Magazine. Now retired, she plans to devote more time to writing. Carole, who is totally blind, lives with her husband in Indianapolis. They have a son who lives in Florida with his wife and two lovely daughters.

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A Long Way from Home, memoir, Phyllis Campbell

That year of 1943 was one of despair for the world, with no end to the war in sight, but it was one of change, of hope, indeed of magic for me.

The world of a child is filled with a secret wonder or fear, which, like the sound of fairy voices in the still summer night, or the sense of something alien at midnight, may belong to her and her alone. It is made up of so many things that may belong to a child or to one whose spirit can find its way back to that world.

There were the warm summer days filled with the scent of flowers and the sound of sheets blowing on the line. There were the smoky days of fall when the nights drew in early and I fell asleep safe in my bed lulled to dreams by the barking of our dog, Sly, busy on matters known only to him. I was safe with Sly on duty. There was the first snow, covering the earth with soft crunchy cold. All these memories along with so many more, paint the portrait of my last year of childhood before that change called school.

School for most blind children in those days meant a school for the blind, usually far from the pupil’s home. No matter, my beloved sister, Nez, went there, and there I wanted to go, too.

Those last days of that year seemed to pass with the speed of a rabbit running from Sly, or that of the sorghum molasses as it poured from the pitcher on cold mornings. One minute it would seem that the time was going so fast I couldn’t breathe, and the next I thought that the second of January, a Sunday that year, would never come.

At last the big day arrived. I found myself doing all the familiar things that made up my days, knowing that it would be a long time before I did them again, but not knowing that they would never seem quite the same again.

It was a day of cold wind and bright sun, without a cloud in the sky, according to my second-cousin, Ronnie, who had come with his parents, Evelyn and Julian, to take us to Staunton since we didn’t have a car.

“I’m glad I don’t have to go away to school,” Ronnie said, as Julian helped Daddy take the luggage to the car.

“You’re just jealous,” I said, although to tell the truth, I was beginning to regret it myself. It was rather like the way you feel on a cold morning snuggled under the covers, you don’t want to move even though you know the day has something exciting waiting for you to come and find it.

“I am not jealous!” he said, and then to my delight, he added, “Not much anyhow.”

“I’ll miss you,” I whispered in an unusual act of affection. Even though he was my cousin, and I loved him, he was still a boy, who liked nasty things like frogs!

“Come on,” he said giving my hand a squeeze, “they’re ready.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said, pulling my hand away. I had something to do, and I wanted to do it by myself. I didn’t think anybody would laugh, but it was something that just belonged to me.

I had already told the rest of them goodbye, the cows, the two farm horses, Prince and Sam, the bantam chickens, who came right to my hand, and of course Sly, all my fur and feather friends, and now there was only one left. Grey Boy, my cat, was my favorite, and I loved him even more than Sly. Sly was precious, especially when I heard his voice on those long cold nights, but he was often off tending to doggie business, nothing to do with a little girl. Grey Boy was always there, never losing patience even when I accidentally stepped on his tail.

I had put off telling him goodbye until the last minute. Somehow, deep inside me it seemed that as long as I didn’t tell him goodbye I wouldn’t be going away.

“Come on, Phyllie,” Daddy called from the yard.

“I love you, Grey Boy,” I whispered, giving him one last hug, and turning away, only to run back, to plant a kiss between his ears. “You be a good cat, and remember to keep the mice out of the pantry, and don’t you dare catch that bird who lives in the birdhouse in the tree over my swing.”

The car was crowded as we all squeezed ourselves in. There were Mama and Daddy, Evelyn, Julian, Ronnie, Nez, and to my joy my oldest sister, Fay.

Until then, she had taken jobs in the neighborhood such as taking care of Mrs. Smith, who to my child’s mind must have been about a hundred. Now, Fay, too, was leaving home to take a job at the School for the Blind operating the switchboard, a thing too complicated for me to even think about. I only knew that joy of joys she was going with me! Fay would be there, my Nez would be there, and I wouldn’t be alone!

I didn’t think about it then, but although I wouldn’t be alone, my parents would. My brother, Lively, had gone back to the army a week earlier, almost certainly to be sent overseas, and now their girls were leaving. In the space of a week all their children were gone. Today I think of how lonely the house must have seemed when they got home that night. I can imagine them lighting the kerosene lamps and building up the fires, alone for the first time since Lively’s birth. And I marvel again at their courage that allowed us to find our places in the world.

But I knew nothing of such grown-up things as I put on my new nightgown that night and climbed into bed.

There were sixteen of us, “the little girls,” as we were called. We slept in a long room that ran almost the entire length of the building on the ground floor. We were cared for by our house mother and her two student helpers, Lucille and Lois.

My house mother was Mrs. Keister, who had been Nez’s house mother, too, when she first came to school. Mrs. Keister was a widow. In those days the house parents lived at the school, and were on duty twenty-four hours a day with one half day off each week as well as every other Sunday. I have heard hair-raising stories about the cruelty of some house parents, and although some were certainly fabrications or exaggerations, I fear that many were true. Such long hours along with the responsibility would certainly bring out the worst in anyone and cause the unstable to topple from sane behavior at times.

Nez and I were lucky, though. Mrs. Keister could perhaps be cranky at times due to the pressure, but we loved her dearly, and she and our family developed a friendship which lasted until the day I played the organ for her for the last time at her funeral.

“Good night, little girls,” Mrs. Keister said on that my first night, and I heard the click of the light switch high on the wall outside the dormitory room.

It was still early, and I could hear the big girls moving around in their dormitory upstairs. I knew that Nez was somewhere up there, and I wished that I could sleep near her.

Mrs. Keister and Mrs. French, Nez’s house mother, had let us stay together until suppertime when I’d been introduced to my partner, another of Mrs. Keister’s girls, whose name was Ellen Shiflett. We all had partners, usually a slightly older girl with a little girl.

We formed a line and moved toward the dining room across a connection porch on the second floor. It was cold that night, and as we went across the porch, I could smell coal smoke coming although I didn’t know it then, from the coal furnaces in the big houses along Beverley Street and the nearby railroad. Even today that odor, not often smelled any more, brings back that cold night in a strange place. From the dining room came the smell of cabbage, and I felt my first pang of homesickness. Mama would just be taking the corn bread out of the oven, or maybe even a blackberry roll made with the berries she and Fay had canned that summer. The kitchen would be warm, and Grey Boy would be rubbing around Mama’s ankles looking for his supper.

The dining room was noisy, and everything tasted so different from home. Before the meal we stood behind our chairs until a bell rang, signaling the blessing which the blind students sang and the deaf students signed.

Now, I lay in my little bed with the covers tucked so tight that I could hardly move. I listened to the sounds from upstairs growing softer and softer until the building was quiet except for the hiss of the radiators and the occasional rush of water as somebody flushed somewhere in the old building, which suddenly seemed as big as the whole world. Somewhere outside a clock struck, and I counted ten. I had learned to count as far as twelve, listening to the clock on a shelf in the kitchen at home, so I knew that meant it was ten o’clock. Nez had told me that at ten o’clock, Mr. Ham, the night watchman, would go to the basement and turn the heat off until five-thirty the next morning. As I listened, sure enough, I heard the outside door to the basement squeak open, followed by another louder squeaking as he turned off the heat. Then, the door closed, and his steps disappeared along the gravel walk.

A patter of sleet tapped at the windows, and I found myself wondering if it really was sleet, or some strange creature of the night trying to find its way in. Overhead, between the ceiling and the next floor, I heard the stealthy movement of little claws. I knew what that was. I was from the country, and I wasn’t afraid of a mouse, well, not much anyhow. Still, I was kind of glad he was up there.

I burrowed deeper under the covers, and almost stopped breathing as something moved stealthily along the hall. Then I breathed again as I heard the jingle of keys, a sound which had already become familiar. It was Mrs. Keister going to lock the outside door for the night. I’d probably been exposed to too much Nancy Drew!

I touched the barrette that held my hair back from my face. Mama had put it there that morning, and I let my fingers linger where hers had moved. Tomorrow, of course, Lois or Lucille would take it out and comb my hair.

One big tear, then another, made their way down my nose and onto the pillow. I knew how lucky I was to have Nez and Fay close. When Nez had started school, she had been all by herself. Another tear found its way to the collar of my gown, this one for her. That was the first time in my six years that I had really felt the pain and sorrow of somebody else. Mostly, though, I felt sorry for myself there in that strange bed, whose sheets smelled so different from those at home, dried in the sun and wind.

From the railroad came the puff-puff of a steam engine and the cry of the whistle seemed to echo my loneliness. Surely the whole world must be lonely on such a cold dreary night.
Then I heard it. At first I thought I must be imagining it, that sound, so familiar, so dear. But as I listened I knew it was real. Somewhere outside, a dog was barking.

It wasn’t Sly, I knew that. Sly was far away, sleeping in the hay, or sniffing out the winter lair of a fox. No, it wasn’t him. But as I listened to the familiar “yo-yo-yo” it seemed that in some strange way he was sending me a message. It was as though in some way, known only to his kind, he had communicated with his brother or sister there near me, sending me hope and love, and I remembered why I had come here to this place, remembered all the things waiting for me to learn.

“I love you old dog,” I said in my head, “I love you.”

The building had grown quiet and the tears had dried on my cheeks. Tomorrow I would start school; would meet my teacher; would play with the other little girls. “Tomorrow!” I told the dog with a spark of joy in my heart, “Tomorrow.”

Bio: Phyllis Campbell has been writing professionally since the 60’s. Her work has appeared in “The Christian Herald,” “The Lutheran Woman,” the publications of the McFadden Woman’s Group, and in “Dialogue.” She has written two books “Come Home My Heart” and “Friendships in the Dark.” She is the editor for the crafts and hobbies columns for “Our Special.” Watch for her first mystery, “Who Will Hear Them Cry,” soon to be distributed by Blind Mice Mart.

Mrs. Campbell lives in Staunton, Virginia with her husband Chuck. She teaches piano and voice with an emphasis on Braille music, and serves as organist at Faith Lutheran Church.

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Lauren’s Dream, memoir, Lauren Casey

When I was growing up my older sister, Jackie, was my role model. Everything Jackie did, I wanted to do. So when she decided to take up downhill skiing, I, of course, wanted to learn how to ski.

Since I was a know-it-all teenager it never occurred to me that my blindness, or should I say, other people’s attitudes about my blindness, could be an obstacle to my pursuits. I recall comments like: “Blind people can’t ski!” “How can you ski when you can’t see where you’re going?” or “That’s too dangerous for you!”

Several years later, upon learning about programs that taught blind people to ski, I immediately obtained more details. One weekend my friend Susan and I went to a ski resort in Vermont for such a program.

Saturday morning I met the instructor who would be giving me my first lesson. After she showed me how to put on my boots and skis, we moved around on flat ground for a while so I could get used to the feel and length of the skis.

Next we went up the chair lift. At the top, it was now time for me to go back down the slope on my own. It was the bunny slope but it was Mt. Everest to me. With the exception of my instructor following behind me occasionally calling out “left” or “right” and other such directional commands, I was doing it all on my own.

Gliding down the hill, my skis cut through the smooth fluffy snow, in the beginner’s snow plow position. In this technique the points of the skis nearly meet to form the tip of a triangle, helping to control speed and steer around rocks, bumps, and other skiers. But those challenges would come later in my skiing career. For now I was alone with my instructor and her occasional directions, with no other sounds of people or of the wind blowing through the trees. With no guide dog harness, no white cane, nor elbow of a sighted guide, the feeling of freedom and independence was incredible. It was just me, my poles and my skis!

Reaching the bottom, I sighed deeply and thought, “Let’s do it again. After all, that’s why I’m here.”

Note: This short story about perseverance was previously published in “Consumer Vision Magazine.” It is taken from a monologue I wrote which is still being performed by myself and other members of our theater company. This story is about living with and coming to terms with our own disabilities.

Bio: Lauren R. Casey is a member of Behind Our Eyes and enjoys participating on the conference calls as often as possible. Through Behind Our Eyes she has taken writing classes with Becky Hein and feels she has gained a great deal. She did a little writing mostly in poetry in high school and college but didn’t start doing more writing until she joined Behind Our Eyes a couple of years ago. Lauren has a bachelor’s in sociology and a master’s in counseling; she lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey with her husband and their Seeing Eye dogs.

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A Simple Pleasure, fiction, Bobbi LaChance

It was one of those treasured but unexpected fake springs we sometimes get in Maine. According to the calendar it was winter, early February; but according to the weather man it would last long enough for everyone to have a nice warm weekend.

Everything had gone wrong that Sunday morning: I burned the breakfast toast; the newspaper wasn’t delivered; I went to the market without my list; and I ran out of gas on the way home. My sweetheart came to rescue me, but that put him in a bad mood so he was watching sports all day.

After a hurried lunch, I made up my mind to take advantage of the season. Warm sand trickled between my toes and tickled my feet as I walked along the beach. That made me laugh. The wind blew through my blond curls, and the sun gave me a bright smile as if it knew what I needed. Seagulls soared overhead and dived for remnants of discarded food. I smelled the salty sea air and gloried in the promise of warmer days coming soon.

At the water’s edge the surf pounded the shore as if there were a tug of war game pushing and pulling, bouncing the foaming whitecaps toward me then pulling them back. In California I used to swim in the Pacific and let it massage my body, but here on the east coast the Atlantic turned my toes blue and made me howl from the icy cold water. The winter had been very cold so I didn’t try the toe test today.

Nearing the boardwalk, I smelled the fried clams and French fries from a vendor happy to have this chance to do business on a warm weekend in February. Then another smell permeated the air. As I crested the top of the stairs and started toward the smell, I knew what it was… chocolate! I was salivating, and my steps were more like skips.

Where was it? I knew it was here! Rounding the corner of the wharf I spied a candy store. “This has to be it!”

At the display window I saw a taffy pulling machine working its magic. Then I saw tray after tray of luscious fudge–peanut butter, raspberry, dark chocolate, white chocolate, with and without nuts. “I could gain five pounds just looking at this!” I told myself.

“Valentine’s Day is coming soon,” I reasoned. I knew my sweetheart probably had my favorite box on order. I would walk away and wait like a good girl… at least that’s what I told myself.

My feet had a mind of their own, and before I knew it, I was in the shop purchasing a half-pound box. My heart throbbed as I clutched it to my chest. The aroma and the anticipation were driving me crazy.

Back on the boardwalk, I went in search of a bench. I didn’t smell fish or salt or anything except chocolate. When I reached the bench and collapsed, I reverently opened the box. Inside lay six perfect squares from one of those just-poured trays that truly had my name on it, didn’t it? I slowly extracted one piece and popped it into my mouth, closing my eyes to savor the rich chocolate, the strong warm vanilla, and the delicate nuts. As it melted in my mouth, my cheeks, my tongue, even the roof of my mouth were coated with chocolate bliss.

The swallows and my grin kept me totally occupied until the last of it lingered on my lips and in my world. My strategy had worked. I had thrown my troubles away. Wasn’t chocolate a wonderful way to do it? I kept my eyes closed to maintain the contentment while I ate a second piece. I was completely satisfied, and my heart was able to slow its beating. I straightened my posture, closed the box, and took stock of the calm that surrounded me.

On the bench across from mine sat an elderly man who, I could tell, had been watching my indulgence. He smiled and winked. I was a bit flustered. The blare of a horn crackled through the air, and the man turned to watch the harbor mail boat docking further down the wharf. Then his attention turned back to me.

“Bad day?” he inquired.

I nodded and wondered how he knew.

“I know,” he shared, “When my wife has a bad day she goes in search of chocolate.” I smiled and blushed, then I stood up abruptly, and the box tumbled to my feet, landing upright. I was mortified. I just stood there looking at it.

His hand quickly appeared, and he picked up the box for me. I looked into his piercing blue eyes and took a step backward. “No thank you,” I stuttered, “You keep it.” I fled.

As I neared the end of the boardwalk I slowed my pace. I was embarrassed. “Why did I do that?” Was I feeling guilty about my sneak peak and pleasure? Valentine’s Day would always be special for loved ones, but two pieces today had brought me contentment on a Sunday when I really needed it.

I dared to look back before leaving the boardwalk. The man was still sitting on his bench quietly. His eyes were closed, and there was a huge smile on his face. I could almost hear him sigh. I giggled as I realized he had just experienced chocolate heaven.

Bio: Bobbi LaChance resides in Auburn, Maine with her husband Richard. She has two grown children and three grandchildren. She loves to snuggle with her Maine Coon Cat, Sassy, while listening to talking books. Her romance novel, “Wishes,” can be purchased through Amazon. Bobbi’s short story, “Beyond the Call of Duty,” can be found in the anthology “Behind Our Eyes.” She is active in her church and does volunteer work in her community. Bobbi loves to bake and has a passion for writing and ice cream.

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Windsong, prose poem, Deon Lyons

The wind sneaked up behind me this evening, whispering through the firs and the leaves. It laughed and teased like an old familiar friend, telling me how it was feeling, smiling, promising that spring would be here soon.

I’d heard that blustery lullaby a thousand times before, humming in my ear. This time it became part of me; and my body swayed in rhythm with its calling.

Its lively, comical personality played around me, then whipped out across the meadow, quick-stepping and singing. It teased the new grass, swishing it back and forth, then raced to the back of the field.

Just as quickly, it changed its mind and flew back to me, calling my name all the way. It brushed against me, took a moment’s rest; then, tired of standing still, it swept up to the branches over my head, gliding through the leaves, rattling in happy harmony.

The concert slipped across the blue spruce and dropped down through the maples and ash. It joyously danced, touching softly then with passion, teasing with each blustery push.

It swooped down and gave me a spin. It took me by the hand. Its graceful lead lifted my steps and carried me away. The song it shared and the chorus from the trees lifted my soul upward. When the waltz ended, my partner turned and raced with fury through the field of grass. I watched it glide up to the line of trees at the edge of the meadow as it waved goodbye.

I could faintly hear its whisper measuring the distance as the sun settled behind me. It left its breath of promise within me, and everywhere around me. The leaves echoed lightly in its wake, but the symphony was gone for now.

I hummed, remembering its melody as I floated through the meadow toward home. Everything smelled fresh after the visit from the wind. As I slept, the song came back to me with pictures of the wind’s motion. I was rocked by nature’s lullaby.

Finally shards of sunbeams forced their way into my reverie. First I heard just a whisper, maybe it was my imagination? Then, gliding down the stairs, I recognized the melody from yesterday’s sunset performance. This song was a gentle morning song without the forte of yesterday’s showman.

The meadow waltz from yesterday still lingers. The gentle harmony from the front porch wind chimes reminds me of the graceful steps of the windsong running through the flowing fields. That familiar call in my daydreams soothes my wandering soul until the day when we dance again.

Comments closed — Trackbacks closed RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Tuesday, September 20, 2011, at 8:50 am by Editorial Staff. Filed in Magazine Editions.

This literary magazine is produced by Behind Our Eyes, Inc, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization of writers with disabilities.