Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

Tender Perennial
By Amy Souza
Response

In one of her last voicemails before she died, my mother said, “I’m lonely. I want to go home.” My heart still breaks for her and for me, because I feel the same and neither of us would ever get what we needed most—a return to that shingled Cape Cod we dreamed about.

I played a role in my mother’s loneliness by living three-thousand miles away and not contacting her frequently enough. I also hid so much from her. At ninety-five and in a nursing home, she didn’t need the burden of my troubles. But that meant our talks lacked realness. As I grieved the losses of home, marriage, career, friendships, I kept it all to myself and our phone calls followed the same trajectory: How’s work? Fine. How’s Dan? Good. What’s new? Not much. Are you busy? Yup.

The magic of Zoom added more to our conversations, because video made it easier to communicate and my mother always marveled at the technology she couldn’t quite believe was real. The last time I saw her was on my fourteen-inch laptop screen. The activities manager carried an iPad to my mother’s room, where she lay curled in bed at 2 p.m. My usually energetic mother wasn’t dressed, a prisoner to the pandemic and restrictions placed on care homes. No visitors, no activities, no reason to wear real clothes. Most days she wasn’t allowed to leave her room and so spent the last months of her life confined.

This day, the activities manager had to wake her, and I watched as my mother stirred. She wore white pajamas, a white robe, under white sheets and a thin white blanket. She wasn’t wearing her usual wig, and her flighty wisps stood at weird angles. But when she realized what was happening and that she could see me on a small screen, she perked up and we laughed and talked for our few allotted minutes. I promised I’d get a vaccine as soon as they came out so I could get on a plane to visit her. “Six months,” I said. “March or April the latest.”

Why didn’t I fight harder to get her out of there? Fly back, rent a house, break her out. That her last days were spent stuck in half a room feeling abandoned and longing for home will haunt me forever. How could it not?

***

Every spring, from my early childhood on, someone (a neighbor? my sister? certainly not my father or me) bought my mother a fuchsia in a hanging plastic pot. They got the showy kind, red and white or purple with oversized flowers, grown as annuals in Massachusetts. My mother loved them. She hung the plant on our house’s entryway porch and from then until fall dutifully tended it; she and I took turns deadheading flowers when they dried and lost their luster.

So much happened in that house. The usual daily life but also turmoil—addiction, fighting, fear, abandonment, too many deaths, and too much sorrow. It’s surprising that my mother and I shared a desperation to return. But the house also contained our traditions, like the springtime fuchsia. And anyway, the heavy memories were ours.

But now the house is gone. My mother is gone. I feel as stuck as she looked in that lousy twin bed. This spring I bought a fuchsia and potted it for my front porch. The flowers are smaller and here in Oregon this tender perennial should survive the winter.

People who hold strongly to the belief in linear time judge those they perceive as living in the past. “Let it go” comes the refrain. “Move forward. Move on.” Maybe they’ve not faced enough pain. Maybe they’re wired differently. Maybe they didn’t have a mother who talked to her dead twin sister at night before going to sleep and sometimes in the morning, too. Maybe their present and future are bright and they don’t mind closed doors. Or maybe they just can’t see there are many ways to exist on this human plane and that no one, try as they might, has every answer.

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The Sailor
By Cheryl Somers Aubin
Response

He lay on his bunk on his side. He is glad that he has finally gotten over the seasickness he had for months when he first joined – that his stomach had finally adjusted. He hears the new men who were picked up at the last port heaving up their breakfasts – a mistake they will not make again.

The ship rose and fell. The seas were rough. The ship itself moaned and cracked, and he knows it worried them. Soon, like him, they will know the sounds, the movements of the ship, be comforted by the knowledge they will gain about life on the sea.

The bunk above him is close, and it makes him feel like he is in a coffin. Because the waves are high today, those on deck need to take care and hang onto ropes so they won’t be swept overboard. He will soon join the other men up top – but for the few minutes he has he writes her a letter – a letter that he will never be able to send.

A few months earlier, the ship had docked after months at sea. All the men worked unloading the cargo and then loading on silk, rice, porcelain, tea, and spices. It was hot and tough and tiresome work to do. The sun blazed down on them all.

Finally, he had a few days off and headed up the hill into the lighter air and into the town to a tea house. He sat there for hours, adjusting to the soft light in the room, listening to the foreign languages and drinking green tea, trying to relax his shoulders. He asked the owner, miming what he was looking for (hands to the side of his face, closing his eyes, feigning sleep), if she knew of a place to stay for a few days, She had a room at the back. The room wasn’t much. It was small, with just a mattress on the floor and light filtering in and a breeze through the bamboo slats. Still it seemed like heaven to him.

The first thing he did was clean up. He found a basin where he could wash his clothes and then paid at a nearby bathhouse for a good long soak. He knew the smell of the sea never left him, but he felt finally clean, finally good. His muscles started to relax. He legs felt funny walking on the ground, as if he needed to get his “ground legs” adjusted and moving right.

When he got back to the room – one of his shirts he had hung up was gone. He could not figure out who would want it – or who would take it.

Fatigue overcame him so he laid down on the mat and fell sound asleep. It was the closest thing to a bed he had been in for years and it felt wonderful. He slept hard. It was light when he awoke and he stretched. He was starving and walked back out front to the tea room for dinner. That is when he saw her. This beautiful, dark-haired woman wearing black and gold necklaces around her neck. Her skirt was multicolored jewel tones with mirrors on it. And she was wearing his shirt. It was buttoned up but also tied up in the front.

She gave him a sly smile, but another waitress approached to take his order, then deliver his food.

Still, he could not take his eyes off of this woman. Who was she?

The tea house got busy and he tried to catch her eye. He watched as she got angry with a sailor, raised one eyebrow, scowled, and pressed her red lips together. That was enough, that sailor did not bother her again.

She looked over at him and faintly smiled, then turned away and didn’t look at him again that evening. Finally he left and went to his room where he fell into a deep black place – but she was there in his dreams – he reached for her but could not touch her.

The next day he was there at the tea house again. Spending almost the whole morning and into the afternoon when she finally came over. She spoke a bit of English, and he asked her her name: “Sumitra,” she answered. Her name was exotic sounding to his ears, Sumitra. Like a song. Like the sun – a flash of beauty and anger.

Eyes that have seen more, witnessed more, a body that moved liquidly. A woman who would teach him things he never knew – never even knew there was to know.

She was getting off so they left together and walked through the town. He wanted to kiss her, possess her, but all they did was walk close, not touching. Already he was aware that time was passing too quickly – his ship would soon sail. There were a few days, a few hours, a few minutes. He never wanted to leave her.

The next day he returned to the tea house, and she looked for him and smiled. They left early again and walked around the town. This time their hands brushed together and she flushed. Finally he took her hand, and she did not pull away.

When he got close, kissed her cheek she smelled musky and hot. Her hair was damp on the sides.

The relationship started quickly and intensely. They could not bear to be apart and slept side by side on his mat. The minutes, then hours, passed and an ache in his heart started.

He tried to tell her the job he had was working as a sailor – but first he was a man and in love with her. Maybe he could find something to do there where she lived.

She laughed and pulled away. But there was a sadness in her eyes.
Often throughout the few days he watched for the ship – for the first unfurling of the sails which meant he needed to return quickly or be left behind. Then, one day, it happened. He looked toward the ship and saw the faint lofting of the smallest sail – it was time for him to go.

He took her hands, looked in her eyes. “Please, I want to stay with you,” he said. She replied, “You must go – and I must stay.”

As he said goodbye and held her he felt the coarseness of his shirt she was wearing. It was what he could leave her. It was all that she wanted after all…

He will take his memories with him. He will write the love letters to her that she will never receive. He will stand at the railing on the deck and release the letters into the air. They will catch in the wind and be swallowed by the sea.

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MM Panas
Response

Ghostwriter
By JoAnn Moore
Inspiration piece

The day before my mother slipped
between worlds
she said—
quite lucidly—
Write me true.
Wouldn’t she rather I
write her well?
Her eyes caught me,
closed. Gone.

The clear line of truth
exists only in
shades of grey.
No black, white
or absolution.
What is the axiom of memory?

Maybe that paralysis
is a remarkable discovery
of what one can live without.
Or that death’s ellipses
sanction refocus.

In life we were separated
by truth.
And bound by blood.
Purgatory binds
the living to the dead,
the ink to the paper.
Now the best I can do is
coauthor the past.

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MM Panas
11×13″ acrylic and charcoal on paper
Inspiration piece

Revelations
By JoAnn Moore
Response

Layered colors
disobey the rudimentary
outlines as if they will
not be contained.

Life is like a painting that way—
the straight bold line
warns of the impending edge,
the permanent pigments lost

at the margins.
How the white fog of mid-life
never truly obscures
the past—

there are consequences
of choice: undertones, tinges, shadows and
stains, a bit of bright,
specks of memory—

reminders revealed
in the tinted strata.

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Living Between the Raindrops
By Kathleen Finn Jordan
Inspiration piece

Living between the raindrops and waiting

For a domino surfing wave

To wisk me into some sun drenched place

Away from the toxic wash 

Of these numbing days

I wonder.

   I wander.

       I listen.

And I write.

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Anne Kressly
Response

Friends of the Earth
By Jennifer Fendya
Inspiration piece

If I said “there’s a story about a man, a woman and an island,”
you’d instantly take those discrete elements and
fill in the blanks, connect the dots, join them in
some idiosyncratic but meaningful way
that has a beginning, a middle and an end. After all,
you were well-schooled, and,
Everybody jumps to conclusions.

You might write a love story
and that would be true, but perhaps not
the formulaic kind that “sells”
— this is no dime store romance novel
and there may be no happily ever after.

You might craft an adventure,
and that would be true too, because the man
and woman, together, are standing on a precipice,
about to take a leap of faith. Will they sink or swim,
or soar? They’ll share the same fate, ultimately,
but what of their individual trajectories?

If I told you the man and woman are dioscuri, born
light years apart but with only three degrees of separation,
could you catch the sound of their thundering hooves
or glimpse the pillars of their torii forever
shrouded in mist as you walk toward the shoreline?

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Ann Kressly
Inspiration piece

Rivu-let(ting)
By Jennifer Fendya
Response

My mind
(in)undated, a-wash

…….— the news is not good —

anywhere

it goes mis-
…….tak(en)ing for calm for

Tranquility (is this the form entitlement takes?)

crash(ing)ed
…….against

(d)a(y)break wall
……. (I’m) behold(en)ing
back,

…….against  agains            again

My grief
…….insisting on all

its pale(tte) cool
…….………Splendour
…….Monet-shades

black-lin(k)ed  — edges —

…….…….…….gerrym(e)andering ~

~                                             ~

~                      ~                      ~

~

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Channie Greenberg
“Abstracted Hillside”
Inspiration piece

Radha’s Dream
By Urmilla Khanna
Response

Radha’s eyelids flickered ever so slightly as she turned on to her side and pulled the soft comforter over her bare arms and head. A gentle breeze swayed the chintz curtains on the window. She was going to be five tomorrow and, in that excitement, she was fighting sleep. Finally sleep came and brought with it a dream.

In her dream world, she stepped out of bed and tiptoed to the window. She saw a red road that led to a house far, far away. She could see the silhouette of the house. It was an old-style bungalow, with manicured gardens. The courtyard was grassy and bright, and covered with a glass dome. Razor beams of sunlight projected from every direction and made the moist blades of grass shine like diamond nuggets. In the back was a row of rooms where she could see servants scuttle back and forth.

Dudh-wala had arrived with his buffalo and was washing its udders in readiness to deliver farm fresh, unadulterated milk. Pankha-wala had settled in his alcove to pull the rope of the pankha and keep the bedrooms cool. Pani-wala had his pails balanced at the ends of a bamboo stick strung across his shoulder and was off to fetch water from the well. She saw the chaukidar, the mali and the cook, all moving about to-and-fro.

Radha’s birthday frock was also starched to perfection and ready for her to wear. It lay on a chair in the corner of her room. It was made of fine organza with a print of polka dots in two shades of green, two shades of blue, two shades of red and her favorite color—eggplant.

When Radha’s mother woke her up, she rubbed sleep off her eyes and looked around in dismay. There was no bungalow, no frock, no celebration.

“But why,” Radha cried. “Isn’t it my birthday?”

“We are not the Angrezi-log. We are Indian people. We don’t celebrate birthdays like the British,” her mother quipped. “You need to get dressed in your uniform and go to school like any other day. Today, I will prepare a special meal and feed the poor children in our community. Don’t you understand the logic? We need to pay homage to the gods who gave you this life and gave you an opportunity to go to a good school.”

Mother could not forget the loss of three babies before she gave birth to Radha. With Lord’s grace Radha had survived the perils of infancy. Radha, however, was growing up in the trails of the British Raj, attending an English run convent school, celebrating friends’ birthdays with candles and cakes. She could not understand the logic.

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Channie Greenberg
“Cool Copper Coin”
Response

Equanimity
By Urmilla Khanna
Inspiration piece

A cool copper coin in the palm of my hand

I toss it in the air. If it lands on heads

I smile.

It is going to be a good day, I say

If it rolls on edge, hesitates, then gently rests as tails,

I shudder to think of what lies ahead.

Divinity, however, is all the same.

Equanimity.

It is the cool copper coin in the palm of my hand

It knows no difference between the imprint on its head, nor that on its tail

It is the cool copper coin in the palm of my hand.

I traverse my circle of life,

pause when the coin rolls on its side

It is that pause where I experience my samskaras,

the deep impressions imprinted on my brain

the experiences of long, long ago

I perceive them as heads or I perceive them as tails

They are nothing but impartial imprints on my brain.

Some I see, others I merely feel

Like the warmth of the womb or the cool breeze that sweeps over the coals

of a cremation pyre

I live through them all just the same

Equanimity, you are the cool copper coin in the palm of my hand

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Amy Souza
Watercolor mixed media on
reporter notebook paper
Response

“Pass the Jelly!”
By Ash Martins
Inspiration piece

Say,
wouldn’t
it be swell
if we humans
sat a spell and hummed
like the bees but danced like
the trees? I think it would be
fine to sway like a pine; we could
fling cones around with the tiniest
‘buzz’ sound while we feast on royal jelly

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.