Anthology 2015
Consider
Mary Pacifico Curtis The 2x4s lifted one-by-one onto a foundation, wooden crossbeams and bracing, metal ties and straps applied, passages drilled for electrical arteries and copper waterways; the sheet rock and mud that seal walls within as stucco, brick, rock or wood outside hold at bay the earth’s elements and events from all that is sheltered between. The basking forms who cast only the merest glance outward through a window or cracked door - make of the warmth and the other ones inside these walls a world all of its own. The one-to-one kindnesses and transgressions in this citadel, unheard and not notable until magnified among throngs, and acts between nations as walls divide and divisions form without walls the humanity, and inhumane deeds of mankind the spoken word, and words yet to be heard. 230
Waiting
Julaina Kleist-Corwin
HONORABLE MENTION PROSE
The package arrived at my Rockridge apartment on an unusually hot California day. When the delivery man rang the doorbell, I was working on the computer, deep in thought, struggling with what exactly a new client wanted from me. I signed for the package while the delivery man joked about what might be in it. When I stood the package on one end, it was taller than I was and I had to read the sender’s name three times before I realized it was from my brother. I hadn’t seen him since he was five and I was seven. Our parents divorced that year and the arrangement was that Dad would raise Larry and Mom would raise me. “We’re even.” Mom had quoted Dad when she told me the story of their parting. “So he didn’t feel obligated to give me child support for you. And I wasn’t about to ask him for a penny.” We moved away from Dad and Larry in Connecticut to the other side of the country, San Francisco Bay Area. We had no further contact except a postal change of address form to Dad “in case of an emergency”. “It’s better that way,” Mom had said. “Since they don’t exist in our present life, we can’t miss them.” But Mom wasn’t fooling me. I heard her crying many times over the years. Her bedroom door couldn’t muffle the sobs that woke me up in the middle of the night. Two years ago, she left the earth and I still have trouble sleeping. I expect her to come home from teaching at the university, put her feet up on the coffee table, and tell me about her day. Grief doesn’t soften; it just gets put on hold at times. Dad and Larry didn’t come to her funeral, but they sent a card. Larry had included a hand-drawn picture of the lake with his sweeping signature added at the bottom. I stuffed their condolenc231