Mending the Breach–Or Not: Introduction
Many of the submissions reveal the various ways we respond to, reject, or repair relationships with mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. Judy Bolton-Fasman’s “What Stage of Grief Is It?” explores temperamental and political differences between siblings. “Storm Shelter” by Gillian Kelly describes how a daughter manages to come to terms with a fractured family. Sharon Lee Harkey’s untitled contribution ponders what it is like to be a half sister, with a shocking ending that transcends ordinary resolutions.
Bonds with friends, especially those formed in childhood, adolescence, or college, can be fragile as well as resilient. “Reunion,” by Mardith Louisell, suggests how tricky a meeting after many years can be. Janice Dilbeck answers the question posed in her title, “When Do We Stop Performing CPR on a Friendship?” Several describe the pain of loss, including Alison Townsend’s “Lament Against Loss” and Nancy Haskett’s “Dear Former Neighbor.” “Mending the Breach: An Apology Letter” is Glenda Ferguson’s witty take on why friendships end. Barbara Collentine’s “The One Who Got Away,” turns the tables on an abusive boyfriend.
It would be nearly impossible in 2026 to avoid the way politics divide us. Mandy Fessenden Brauer’s “I Don’t Recognize Her Anymore” takes on perceptions of the conflict between Israel and Gaza. Lisa Moak’s contribution observes that hair style can be a stand-in for political choices. The simple, stunning metaphor of Jeanne Lesinski’s “Nesting Material” acknowledges the damage deep differences inflict on the United States.
Families, friends, politics: these were the subjects of most submissions. But Ann E. Michael’s “Jesus Has Nothing To Say to the Aged,” angrily questions how a woman dealing with the difficulties of growing old can sustain a belief in God. “Bra War,” by Barbara Felton, highlights a surprising difference of opinion “to understand… the inevitable continuation of the lifelong trade-offs between pain and dignity that haunt every woman’s life.”
Rosetta Radtke’s piece expresses the task we all ultimately face: “Mending the Breach–with Myself.” Regrets, ill-chosen decisions, missed chances, estrangements, loss, rejections, apathy, unkindness—an entire range of actions and inactions intended and unintended—mark us as human beings. I hope there is someone reading this who has not had a breach to mend. But if you do, these essays, poems, and short stories may shed light on your path as you navigate the complexities of relationships and values that shape who you are, that give meaning to your life.
Prayers to Chairs, acrylic, string, and cut/knotted canvas, by Carol Schoder
Lament Against Loss
(after the end of a forty-year friendship)
They wander the yard like lost gray dogs, looking for the mistress who once claimed she loved them. Where is she? they ask with sad eyes, sniffing the grass for your scent. Where has the heart
I called home gone, leaving me alone?
My poems are an empty version of the See’s Candy box you sent one Valentine’s Day, printed with a sea otter holding a heart, proclaiming You otter be mine! When I lift the lid, pink tissue rustles, its plaid ribbon loose around the ghost-scent of Euphoria chocolate you tucked inside.
Without you, my poems are midden, a heap of broken teacups printed with blue roses we once drank from together, their translucent porcelain shattered into shards that slice my throat, every line stuttering and incomplete.
I pick them up and piece them together, mending them with gold, the way potters do in Japan, the breakage between us made beautiful, my imperfect love shining, bright between the cracks.
What Stage of Grief Is It?
I am the oldest in our pack of three, and you are the baby – sister and brother. We are strangers to each other again. Our estrangement is such that I grieve for you.
What stage of grief is it when the flickering pilot light of your anger spreads and consumes us?
When you are three, you sit astride me and pound your fists into my chest. The bruises are the rainbowed colors of a tempestuous sky. I, five years older, pray quietly for you at bedtime.
What stage of grief is it when I realize you are always seething?
You are expelled from school. But mom’s pleas are convincing, and you land at a fancy prep school she cannot afford. Her feral boy, her only son, is pure potential in her eyes. She hires a phalanx of tutors, working a second job to pay them. Still, she does not save you.
What stage of grief is it when I exhaust myself appeasing you?
You stop talking to me many times throughout our adult life. The silence stings and can go on for months or years.
What stage of grief is it when I realize I cannot help you?
Yours is a hardscrabble life. You pick up and drop off your kid at a police station every other weekend. You are squatting at a client’s boondoggle of a mansion he can’t sell for love or money.
What stage of grief is it when you tell me that you have nothing to live for?
The water and electricity have been cut from where you have been squatting. You are cold, hungry. You are afraid, calling me early in the morning. Gently, I tell you to pack a bag. I promise to stay on the phone as you get into your car. I stay on with you for over two hours until you arrive in my driveway.
What stage of grief is it when I can no longer talk to you?
The January 6 riots devastate our lives like an earthquake. I call the people defiling the Capitol criminals. You say the people who attacked the Capitol are patriots. You call me a traitor to our country. Later that day, you block me on your devices.
What stage of grief is it when I understand that losing you has always been inevitable?
You have banned me from your life, and this time, it feels irreversible.
What stage of grief is it when I know I will never see you again?
There will come a time when I do not know if you are dead or alive.
What stage of grief is it when I mourn you, my living, estranged brother?
Estrangement from the French – estranger – to alienate, and the Latin – estranear – to be treated as a stranger.
How do I assuage the brother-sized hole in my soul?
Reunion
In college, I’d looked up to a friend, a junior to my sophomore. Vilma was smart and ironic with a handsome, funny older boyfriend in law school. With steely brown/gray hair at twenty, her beauty was a sharp Italian kind, large breasts, long legs, gray eyes, chiseled face and nose. She stood as though she was about to tip over, but that could have been the heels fashionable then. Her talk, alternating between scoffing and astonishment, ranged from the allure of a black strapless dress to the morality of euthanasia. She seemed sophisticated, and I felt blessed she liked me—although maybe one day she’d scoff at me, too.
After graduation, she married her boyfriend and taught high school in a small town. To entertain herself while proctoring three-hour exams, she analyzed a philosophical dilemma—free will, for example, which confirmed to me how smart and disciplined she was.
After that, we didn’t correspond or meet. The few times I called, I learned about her family, her voice conveying the same disbelief as it had in college, which delighted me. For thirty years, I’d craved a friend like Vilma, someone unpredictably insightful with whom I’d analyze Big Issues as well as people; but I’d resigned myself to going through life without that.
I found through the internet that she was coming to San Francisco. I was her equal now, a woman with life experience and considered opinions. I’d tell her about my work and she’d have a quick insight; she’d tell me about her students’ generation compared to ours; we’d talk about her husband and my artist partner (I thought an “artist” conferred cachet), about poverty, global warming, college professors and friends. It would be Life, the Universe and Everything.
We met on a San Francisco pier where sea lions honked and tourists bought locally-sourced organic food and caramelized macaroons. A dozen pigeons sat at her feet. “Pigeons are underrated,” was the first thing she said. “No one realizes how beautiful they are.” Their peacock-colored bodies gleamed iridescent like a long-ago acid trip; but shouldn’t she have said “hello” after thirty years? “Yes,” I said without enthusiasm.
Vilma’s elegant gray jacket and pants were designer-made. She had money. I wore the casual, fashionable non-fashion of San Francisco and hoped she knew it was a fashion. Her two kids had both become wealthy. She still scoffed, but she was proud. Travel, kids, shopping. No art, music, or books. It wasn’t what I’d dreamed of—a conversation about life, maybe even death, the two of us appreciating, learning from and admiring each other because we were so alike and so intelligent.
I’m sure she still visits every year, but she doesn’t call. Maybe we wouldn’t have remained friends even had we lived in the same city. Had she changed? Had I? Did I imagine her brilliance, or was she so brilliant I couldn’t keep up with her? What was so beautiful about pigeons? The pigeons in front of my house were eating my pansies.
Reaching through a walled divide across the desert of endless time, photo illustration by Carolyn Campbell
Holding On
with scrap wood and galvanized nails—
how to darn a hole in an old sock
that others would throw away.
I know when the pendulum clock
is winding down by its lethargic chime
and that ten turns of the metallic key
will bring time back on track.
I know how to lull myself to sleep,
as I once did with my sister,
singing Somewhere Along the Way
side by side in the double bed.
I know how to hold onto memory
when years tumble into decades—
Kathleen now bloated on steroids,
dumb with alcohol, bitter with regret.
I know that turning a key
will not reset time, and yet,
at night I still sing to myself:
Our hearts were carefree and gay.
How could I know I’d lose you
somewhere along the way?
When Do We Stop Performing CPR on a Friendship?
We were the two brightest students in elementary school, the ones teachers paired together, and other students’ parents quietly compared. Our report cards became scoreboards.
She won. I won. Draw.
Out of school, we were the best of friends. Hours on the phone and sleepovers every weekend, whispering our most reverent hopes and dreams: my future as a foreign journalist and hers as a global economist. It continued this way into high school, where we had to earn the childhood fame we had taken for granted. We both chose French as the playing field. At graduation, she won the Marie Therese Award for Excellence in a Foreign Language.
I got on a plane to Paris the next day. Checkmate.
She went to Harvard on a full ride powered by obsessive SAT preparation, a photographic memory, and an entrance essay I quietly helped write. You’re welcome.
She later accepted an offer to study abroad for her doctoral degree, where she met her current husband, married, and settled into academic life. In contrast, I left community college after one year because survival without support became more urgent than education. My entrepreneurial acumen kept me afloat, fueled my early business success, and ultimately served me in the corporate world. The gap between us was becoming a gulf.
I last saw her at her first wedding in 1971.
In 2023, after 52 years of silence, we were reconnected through a mutual friend. I admit I was apprehensive, but the initial meeting felt familiar. We shared the triumphs and tragedies of our marriages, careers, families, and friends. We were archaeologists of our own childhood, resurrecting a world that no longer existed. Nostalgia has a deceptive way of distorting reality.
Gradually, our conversations changed. The calls grew longer, heavier. Her health was failing. Then came signs I could not ignore—confusion, instability, a growing darkness that ended in a failed suicide attempt. I tried to help, but the more I reached out, the more the friendship bent under the weight of need. The girl who had been my equal slowly became someone I feared leaving alone. Responsibility turned into exhaustion. Exhaustion became dread.
Then came the email in January 2026.
It was precise and merciless. My concern was unwelcome. My efforts made things worse. Everything I believed I had offered as care was returned as injury. I was blindsided.
She suggested we take a break, and I agreed.
That was our final exchange.
For months, I wondered whether broken relationships should be fought for at all costs. We celebrate loyalty as if endurance itself is proof of love. But not every relationship needs resuscitation. Some deserve only witness.
This friendship gave me a childhood. It also taught me that history is not ownership.
Some relationships die because their story has been told. In this case, the reunion only revealed what had already been written.
Memoir
It read, approximately, “Fuck politics. I miss you. Please respond.”
I have not responded. I suppose it’s possible. Someday. I am stymied by the idea that she could miss me. She doesn’t really know me. We didn’t grow up together. The longest visit I ever had with my father’s second family was three weeks. They were living in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I got sun poisoning the first day because there was no such thing as sunscreen and they slathered some baby oil over me and the sun loved it. My skin didn’t.
But I don’t know what it’s really like to be a “sister.” I mean, what is that? All of my “halfs” know; they’ve had each other to grow up with. I was an only child. The concept of sisterhood remains completely foreign to me.
I did try for a while as an adult. One of my younger halfs, Candy, reached out about 25 years ago, and that led to resuming a relationship with our father, too. I appreciate that. I also got to know a tiny bit and then mourn another “half,” who died of ovarian cancer a number of years ago, leaving a couple of sons and a daughter.
My niece Nikki was the only family member with whom I shared political views. She, like Jenny, lived in Wisconsin, in an area that wasn’t all that comfortable for Democrats, so we bonded over that. After her mother died, she fell into depression, understandably. Nikki didn’t live too far from her Aunt Jenny and I gather they were pretty close. I think Jenny helped her financially when she could, but I don’t think that was very significant. Not sure what Jenny’s money situation is like, but again, I don’t really know them. At all.
What I do know is that Jenny gave Nikki a Glock. To keep her safe, of course. I believe there were some sessions at a shooting range, making sure to know how to handle it responsibly.
Because a gun is the right thing to give to someone suffering from depression.
It’s not the MAGA politics that keeps me from answering. It’s the gun that Nikki used to kill herself.
After the Storm, acrylic on canvas, by Judi Silvano
Bangs
I’ve noticed a new hair trend among women, one that I accidentally wore my first year in college—the severe bang cut. Bangs cut so short as to say, I don’t care about your ideas of beauty. In my freshman year at school, I asked a friend to cut my bangs. She cut and cut until they were no more. This was shortly after I was invited to a fraternity banquet. My worried date-to-be asked my roommate if they would grow out before the event. They did not. The pictures of that night—me with my banquet gown, a leftover from high school prom, him in a light blue tux, my bangs sheared close to my scalp—are still an embarrassing reminder of trying new things and ideas that aged badly; from big hair to curly perms. Styles come and go, and we can only laugh as we look back.
After a bad car wreck in my junior year, my bangs became a shelter. A car turned out in front of me at a light. This was before seatbelt laws. My unbelted body flew into the windshield, causing severe lacerations to my face that needed years of reconstructive surgery. I grew out my bangs long enough to sweep across my face and hide the red, swollen scars. This was my normal look for decades, hiding beneath a wave of hair. I was always afraid that the wind would blow it back from my face, even after the scars had faded, because after having half my face rebuilt, my eyes don’t match. These days, I’ve grown accustomed to my new face, which is now my old face, which is only me with more wrinkles and scars. With age comes a certain settling in.
During the COVID era, I grew out my bangs. When I finally saw my stylist, she loved my bangless look. I got the idea my bangs were not in trend, but now, I’m finally “in.” My stylist has been cutting my hair for 20 years. She feels like family; but since the lockdowns, there has been an unspoken divide. Where once we could disagree on certain topics, now it’s best to stick to safer conversations. I wonder if she is ignoring my texts. Have I unknowingly said something wrong? It’s not hard to do these days.
As I wait and hope my stylist will text me an appointment to tame my unruly frizz, I worry about these things: political statements and offending others. I temper my social media posts to bland pictures of plants because I’ve lost friends who misinterpret my words. What will others think if they know what’s really under all this hair? How many more will defriend me? Is hair, like everything else, political? Then I remember: I’ve never been in style, in step, or in anything except my own little world, with my scars and old ideas from an age where we all wanted big hair. I don’t want division or judgment. I want my bangs back.
Things That Are Broken
After Dorianne Laux
on its tracks—ice cubes dripping—
fixed with a tug and a yank.
Glass shaker slipped from my hands.
Curse or omen?
Mended with glue and finesse;
salt tossed over my shoulder.
Crape myrtle tree in my yard—
pink blossoms like loaves on limbs—
branches snapped by winds
that fueled the fires
that scorched the forests
that ashed the yellowing air.
Graft it with duct tape.
Perhaps this one tree will be saved.
Bread, when we can all share it together,
leaning arms and stories at the same table.
Morning. Waves. Promises. My spirit,
these days. Records:
121 degrees, acres burned,
particulates in pollution, species extinct,
number of stars unseen.
Little Sister
Third drawer in the battered wooden chest
Undisturbed in my brother’s old bedroom.
High school idealistic me packed away
My 1974 valedictorian speech,
First poem published by the Future Homemakers of America
Magazine clipping of a woman on a beach reaching for her future
Blue and red victory ribbons won at speech tournaments
Precious remnants of who, what and where I was then.
I traveled 555 miles away from my adolescence to college study.
Unknowingly, little sinister sister upended my treasures
Never learned the why. Never spoke about it.
Gone were those halcyon days captured
in faded black-and-white photos
of little sisters who clasped their matching Easter baskets.
Grief over the loss of our beloved mother and sister
Chipped away the stones of sibling rivalry, the unforgiven trespasses.
Growing older blurred the discord of adolescence,
The absences at weddings and births,
Mending all which went before.
No longer little girls with baskets
We clasp each other for life.
I See Myself Everywhere, extreme close-up photography by Merry Song
I Don’t Recognize Her Anymore
I knew she’d been to Israel, I knew she continued
to study her religion, I knew she remained active
at her synagogue and that she kept in touch with
rabbis and religious scholars all over the world.
Then she became a stranger after 7 October 2023.
It’s so sad, so inexcusable, yet also so inescapable.
We’ve known each other since we were twelve
in junior high school. We both loved to study
so sparked each other despite many differences.
We are now in our mid-eighties and don’t live close.
As young, married matrons we both moved across
the vast continent from where we were raised.
Our families enjoyed each other’s cooking sprees,
and we often had conversations far into the night.
We shared many high spots, and some not so great.
I was at her house with my young daughter to watch
her cat give birth, sharing one of nature’s miracles
only a few months before we both gave birth
to healthy sons, who remained our pride and joy.
We met less after I moved to Gaza and elsewhere
but kept in touch with lengthy letters and emails.
sharing painfully ugly divorces and ideal remarriages
which we could commiserate and then celebrate
when we had those special times together,
our minds leaping, stretching beyond the simplistic,
But as the killing kept on, no agreement, no compassion.
While I feel I’ve watched almost the whole world die,
she’s refused to see, smell the stink, hear the screams
from those who’ve lost everything, except their lives.
When her husband died, she showed no empathy
with what was happening elsewhere, insisting
there are no innocents fighting Israel because
clearing the land requires defining newborns
as tiny terrorists, their deaths inconsequential.
Then why do I miss her, my childhood friend?
Mending the Breach: An Apology Letter
I am sorry that you ended up in the hospital with food poisoning from the lettuce salad I served you at your “My Divorce is Final From My Ex” celebration.
I really thought the dressing I added was bleu cheese, my husband’s favorite. I found out later the dressing expired last year. The doctor assured me that pumping your stomach should take care of the worst of it. Just stay close to the bathroom for the rest of it.
I apologize that the tip of your toe got severed. I found out the salad was toxic when I observed my husband making a disgusted face when he taste-tested it from your plate. I rushed over and slapped the fork out of your hand. But it was too late. You had already eaten some of it, obviously. I really thought the fork would fly off to the side. Who knew a heavy implement like that could flip up then rotate in midair? It was like an expert juggling act. Then the sharp tines stuck into your toe, pinning you to the sole of your open-toed shoes. (Actually you shouldn’t wear sandals with that short dress. What were you thinking?) I was touched by how my husband called 9-1-1. He doesn’t often leap into action. But after he got over being horrified by the sight of all that blood, and then you screamed at him, he managed to pull himself together and get the help you needed.
When I paid you a visit at the hospital the second time, your daughter said you had been enjoying my homemade walnut fudge before you chipped your front tooth. I swear I checked for shells before I mixed the batch up. Lesson learned! By the way, that recipe has been in my husband’s family for years, and I am more than happy to pass it along. The recipe, not my husband. Ha ha.
I am sure that the restraining order is just a misunderstanding. But when it is lifted, I would like to offer you a ride home from the hospital. Although my car brakes have been acting up lately.
By the way, last week I found your lacy underwear stuffed into our couch cushions. My husband can return those to you in person.
I have a new address now that I will text you. I just didn’t want you to be “the last to know.”
Your ex-neighbor,
Ann
Dear Former Neighbor
Yes, once we were friends
when you lived across the street,
our daughters inseparable companions,
even our cats acquainted.
Those were the days of your constant
tole painting on various wooden pieces,
and it’s true I still have the miniature house
where the Kleenex comes out of the chimney
like cotton smoke,
the Pilgrim candleholders that occasionally
emerge from the cupboard for Thanksgiving,
even the wooden crate that now holds toilet tissue rolls
in the bathroom.
But we are no longer friends,
not when our only communication
is your annual holiday letter,
sour synopses in which you can’t seem to resist
inserting your political agenda,
praising the current administration
and cabinet members,
every December a little jab
you can’t resist inserting
into the news about your daughter’s work,
your granddaughter’s accolades,
reminding me that geography is not
the only thing that separates us now.
Fragile, photograph by Elaine Happnie
The One Who Got Away
I am leaving you.
The moment you grab my ankle and won’t let go and I am dragging you across the wood floor, I know I am leaving you.
Your apartment is filled with fishing gear, empty beer bottles, stale cigarettes, and too loud Neil Young music. You are still 6 foot 2 to my 5 feet 4, even though you are below me with both hands around my left foot. It takes all my effort to get closer, closer to the front door. I am working with only one leg, my arms stretching before me to balance, but also reaching towards the way out. I walk at the speed of crawling… forward, forward. I am sweating and shaking as the victory from this exhausting year-long marathon of a love/hate relationship is inches from my grasp. Suddenly, with all my strength, I shake my foot violently and you are thrown backward with such force that you land against the couch, pathetic, with just my poor scrunched-up pink sneaker in your grip. I practically topple over now that I am released. I balance myself, grab the doorknob, swing the door open and run, one foot bare, up the stairs back to my own apartment.
My clothes are scattered around my bedroom, as I have not lived here with any recent regularity. As I throw underwear, t-shirts, shorts into a suitcase, the moments play past me: the first time we met, the first time you kissed me, the first time you said you loved me…the first time you hit me… I look back at my bed and recall the time you threw me down on your bed and slammed the mattress with your fist on one side of my head, then the other side of my head, back and forth your fist pounding and pounding from one side of my head to the other. The tiniest flinch gets me punched in the face, so I don’t move a muscle. Well, I am moving now…
I go back to live with my parents. One day you call and leave a message with my mother that you are moving across the country. Still heartbroken, but I know enough not to call back.
Sometimes, I’ll find old photographs or hear Neil Young on the radio. When that happens I am swept back to the earliest memories with you: You’re a good cook, you promise me. You rented a funny movie, you add. Just say yes, you smirk. So I do. First love, passionate affair, torrid romance. Over the years I muddle it all up, and in my wistful reminiscing, you become “the one who got away.”
Then, one day, now in the age of Google and cell phones, I get a text. It’s from an area code and number I don’t know, but when the message sends an old familiar chill through me, I know it’s from you. And in that instant, I know the one who got away is me.
Jesus Has Nothing to Say to the Aged
wretched, retching, wracked, bleeding and
dehydrated, all for our redemption, I
was told; but he endured less than a day
and died young, before the human frame
brittles, limps, contracts, much weakened by
its chronic daily ills—threescore and ten
or longer, he knew not. He suffered extraordinary
anguish, but the debilities most of us endure—
what does he know of these? What can he say
to those like me, long shorn of youth, not always
blessed with years, who find in life no comfort
from familial bosoms, who have seen much
suffering through small human losses: loves,
and those beloved? What can he know of age?
Life’s whetstone grinding away at the many
left abandoned, sore, slow, humiliated by their own
bodies, stricken low—where can they find,
in his experience, hope, comfort, or repose?
The redemption he promised me seems distant.
If he had but understood flesh’s urge and fade,
he could have been a savior who dwindled,
his succor and support embracing me through
not hours of pain, but years. Whether he’s abandoned
me or I’ve estranged myself from him, who knows?
I wonder what awaits. And if I can forgive.
Apology
and that’s all it took
to open a passage
through the thicket of thorns
I built to protect my heart.
As the light slides in,
past tangles and weeds,
through some slight trick of the eye
I catch a glimpse of
the love we once shared.
After the Storm, acrylic on canvas, by Sharon Brandon
Bra War
Getting a bra on someone who cannot assist you by lifting her arms or moving her shoulders takes skill. And a lot of time. Wendy, one of the nursing home aides for my sister Marge, asks my permission to dress her without a bra. “She winces in pain when I get her into her bra,” Wendy says.
I’m Marge’s health care proxy, so I must give permission. I hesitate only briefly. Marge’s pre-dementia self might have preferred careful attention to her body’s appearance, evidenced by her past devotion to designated “diet foods.” But the women in our family are (equivocally) blessed with smallish breasts. I figure that Marge’s breasts, small to begin with and diminished with age, will bother her little—and disconcert no observers—if left free.
“Skip it,” I say.
“No!” says Roz, another one of Marge’s aides. Roz is acutely sensitive to signs of pain in Marge, scanning her face for grimaces and alerting nurses to the possible need for additional pain medication. But Roz, possibly relying on a formality rooted in her Ghanian past, believes wearing a bra is essential to a woman’s dignity. So she counters Wendy—a local native who herself favors casual sweats—by including a bra in Marge’s morning toilette. Roz is honoring Marge, she believes, by putting on her bra.
The bra war has carried on for four months now. Visiting in the afternoons, I can tell who won that morning. Because administrative schedules dictate who dresses Marge in the morning, the battles involve no direct physical conflict but consist of deep sighs, rolled eyes, and occasional side-of-the-room complaints to me about the other’s choice. Early on, as a potential peacemaker, I considered compromises—camisoles, perhaps, or a loose athletic-type bra—but I’ve chosen not to intervene. I’ve come to understand the bra war to be the inevitable continuation of the lifelong trade-offs between pain and dignity that haunt every woman’s life. So many of the efforts a woman undertakes to stake her claim in dignity—wearing a bra or high heels, withholding tears—exact some kind of pain. Women’s lives unfailingly pulse with these perpetual choices.
Marge, unable to articulate her own wishes, stands aside as a noncombatant in this conflict. Rather, she is the terrain of the bra war, a repository of the unending battle to balance pain and dignity. Marge is no longer a player but she remains a woman, and so her war continues.
Storm Shelter
one frost, one wildfire.
The frost spoke in silences
sharp enough to slice.
The wildfire devoured
what it claimed to love.
They called it illness,
but illness was too clean a word for it.
It moved like weather—
a storm that never moved on,
just shifted its weight from room to room.
My father was lightning—
sudden, searing,
leaving no mark on the sky
but carving me open in secret places.
My mother, the fog—
blurring edges,
making me doubt
what I could see
and who I was.
I built a fantasy world
the way a child builds a raft—
not to thrive,
but to float away.
There, I was the maiden,
the innocent, the lost.
And there was always
a wolf at the door,
just dangerous enough
to keep me dreaming.
Then I found their letters,
yellowed and whispering—
soft laughter caught in the folds,
nicknames and nonsense and
the ache of wanting each other
through the madness.
How could such warmth exist
in a house that froze me through?
How could they dance
in the kitchen firelight
while I curled like ash in the corners?
Their love was a storm shelter
I was never let inside—
they weathered it together,
and I,
I became the weather they ignored.
But now I know:
truth is not a single color.
The fire that hurt me
also lit their laughter.
The same hands that harmed
once held someone tenderly.
It doesn’t make it right.
But it makes it real.
And maybe,
that’s the beginning of leaving
the castle I built
for the world that truly was—
cracked, cruel,
and sometimes,
still beautiful.
Mending the Breach – with Myself
“We are the breakers of our own hearts,” Eudora Welty wrote. Like many of us, I think, I haven’t always been my best friend or advocate; I’ve done things and left others undone I deeply regret; I’ve stood squarely in my own way many times.
But since I moved back to Savannah several years ago, I feel I’ve been given a grace period to reconcile with myself. Looking back, there was a moment, one decision that changed my life. I won’t write about it here, but it was a crossroads moment, a one direction or its opposite moment. The direction I chose set the process of reconciliation in motion.
I started writing again “out of the blue” after decades; the words just came back or, probably more accurately, I started hearing them again.
I started volunteering at the local humane society, working with cats that were frightened, distrustful, hurt, angry, grieving. Literally touching their need put me back in touch with the need in myself. I realized I couldn’t ask them to let their walls down if mine were up. I had to be open to them, had to let myself be vulnerable. That put me back in touch with love.
Amazing things started to happen. Many of the cats started to purr. Their eyes smiled; they relaxed; they gave me head bumps and kisses. They stopped being afraid; they started to trust. I realized I was probably the first person to love some of them and that I was the first person some of them had ever loved. I felt the hand of God working through me, softening my hands and heart. I started to trust, started to love. I felt like a messenger, a conduit that put me back in touch with my spiritual self and God.
No amount of good can undo a single wrong. But when I understood the wrongs didn’t and couldn’t negate the good I could still do—unless I let them—that was the epiphany. That simple realization freed me in a way nothing else had.
This past winter I started thinking in a visual way not attached to words, which I hadn’t been able to do since early childhood. Like putting together a puzzle, I continue to find where the pieces fit. I won’t find them all, but I’ve found enough to see what the puzzle is or was or could be.
Coming and Going, photograph by Cris Blackstone
Accepting People Where They Are
I often ponder the saying, “A reason, a season, a lifetime”—a phrase that categorizes the various purposes and duration of our human relationships. I believe “lifetimers” are a rather rare occurrence, lumping most of our encounters into the “reason” or “season” classification.
A “reasoner” tends to fit in the category of acquaintance, someone we’re slightly familiar with, mostly in a superficial or surface way. These connections can also be brief, a one-and-done interaction. “Seasoners” confirm the phenomenon of like attracts like: we attract people where we are at that moment in time. These folks become part of our tribe, our posse. They are our BFF’s. These friendships often last for years, even decades, until re-locations, divorces, or other life changes begin to create distance and fewer opportunities to gather together. Or the connection merely begins to weaken or fade.
Ten years ago, when divisiveness began to permeate our land, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the majority of my “seasoners” could be described as kindred spirits. We share the same morals and values. We engage in deep, meaningful conversations. We lift each other up, in good times and bad, the truest measure of friendship. We listen intently and never offer unsolicited advice. We’ve been equally horrified about the state of our world, where kindness, empathy, inclusion, tolerance, and love have been replaced with hate, apathy, mistrust, separation, and fear. I’ve spent copious amounts of my free time with these individuals. They are my social outlet, the reason this homebody ventures from her cocoon.
I was a bit surprised to learn that a few people I call friend don’t share my world views. These are good people—kind, hard-working, honest, decent citizens—whom I’ve known for years. I’d never thought much about anyone’s political affiliations, as we had lived in a time when politics (and religion) were mostly taboo topics. People hold strong, non-negotiable convictions around these belief systems, so we collectively chose to avoid these hot-button subjects. And it worked until a forum known as social media shattered the rules. These are no longer verboten topics; addressing them often results in heated discussions that become intense, angry, hateful, and full of lies and embellishments, and has also culminated in bullying, ostracism, and the termination of once-healthy relationships.
While I cannot and never will agree with the beliefs and opinions of these few, I can show them the respect we’re all entitled to—we simply agree to disagree. I only discuss touchy topics, like politics, with like-minded individuals, not because I refuse to hear an opposing view or opinion, but simply because there are so many other interesting, non-triggering things we can discuss and share. And instead of shunning them by ending a decades-long connection, I choose to accept them where they are, as stated in this anonymous quote:
“Life becomes peaceful when you switch from Expect to Accept…”
Nesting Material
On the rusty pole.
Ends of white stripes gape
Like lost teeth.
Torn red stripe, a blood trail.
From the rope
A sparrow pulls threads.
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Margaret Chula has published more than a dozen poetry collections. She’s been a featured speaker and workshop leader at writers’ conferences throughout the U.S. as well as in Poland, Canada, Peru, and Japan. Born in Massachusetts and having lived in Japan for twelve years, she now makes her home in Portland, OR.
Judy Bolton-Fasman (
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After teaching high school English for 27 years in New Jersey, Barbara Collentine now lives a writing life in Florida. She has previously had a piece of flash fiction published in Persimmon Tree. She continues to read and write to sharpen her storytelling for others to enjoy.
Janice Dilbeck is a life and career coach supporting a mature client base struggling with ageism and sexism in the workplace. She is also a writer of fiction, nonfiction essays, and short stories.
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Barbara Felton is a farmer and writer in Warwick, NY, who began writing creative nonfiction in 2014 following careers in psychology (NYU, Department of Psychology) and mental health administration. Her personal essays have been published in The Southhampton Review, Duende, HerStory, InScribe, Welter, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others.
Glenda Ferguson lives in southern Indiana and has been happily married to her husband Tim for more than 40 years. She contributes nonfiction to Chicken Soup for the Soul and writes devotions for All God’s Creatures. She enjoys writing fiction when given a challenging Short Takes topic.
Sharon Lee Harkey is 73 years old. In the 1990s, she overcame a disability that had left her unable to read or write. As she slowly recovered, she ran an audio transcription business. Politics has taken up some of her time in the last several years, but after retiring, writing has returned.
A retired language arts teacher, Nancy Haskett has had work featured in more than 40 publications. She is currently the poetry editor for the National League of American Penwomen. A collection of her poems, Shadows & Reflections, is available on Amazon. She lives in Modesto, CA, with her husband and extended family.
Gillian Kelly writes poetry and plays about fractured families, hidden histories, and the stories people tell to survive. Drawing on Appalachian influences and emotional realism, her work blends lyricism, dark humor, and haunting imagery.
Jeanne Blum Lesinski is a poet in the wild, unaffiliated with any institution or school of thought. Her works have appeared in journals and anthologies, including Quartet, Midwest Review, MUSE, and Literary Mama. Her poetry collection, Tethers End, debuted from Shanti Arts in 2023. Find her at 
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Rosetta Radtke lives in Savannah, GA. Her poems have appeared in a variety of online and print journals, including Poetry Now, Pitcher, Off Main Street, Passages North, Pembroke Magazine, the Staten Island Review, Wind, and Persimmon Tree. Her chapbook, winter’s gifts, has recently been published by Bottlecap Press.
Joan Hyams Schmitz self-published a memoir, Carried by a Feather, that won second place in a contest sponsored by The Bookfest. She’s been published in Persimmon Tree, has submitted articles to a neighborhood newsletter, and completes writing projects for a hospice where she’s a volunteer and death doula.
Connie Soper is a poet living and writing in Portland, OR, who enjoys traveling. Her work has appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Catamaran, Cider Press Review, Sky Island Journal, ONE ART, and elsewhere. Her first full-length book of poetry, A Story Interrupted, was issued by Airlie Press in 2022.
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Judi Silvano has been a member of the Wallkill River Center for the Arts for 15 years and joined the Board of Directors in 2023 as Music Curator. She is a painter, singer, composer, and lyricist, has released 14 albums to critical acclaim, taught Voice at Rutgers University, children at Newburgh Academy and International Master Classes in “Freeing the Voice”.
Linda Barrett Osborne is the author of six books on American history for middle school/young adults, including Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of News and Who’s Got Mail: The History of Mail in America (all published by Abrams). Her adult nonfiction books include Explorers, Emigrants, Citizens: A Visual History of the Italian American Experience (Library of Congress/Anniversary Books). She was a senior writer-editor in the Publishing Office of the Library of Congress for fifteen years.
Gillian Kelly, I appreciate a piece that looks at parents as people rather than only as parents. It’s so rare that I read a piece like this and such a hard place to arrive at. Thank you.
Barbara Felton, “Bra War” was superb. I know people who are experiencing this dynamic and can imagine more friends who will, perhaps me, too, in years to come. Turning the war into a comment on women’s struggles to decide identities is terrific, told by a wise narrator, in a position many of have been in or will be in. It’s a moving description of loss of agency and the indignities that the old experience and how strongly imprinted cultural norms are. That line between comfort and appearance (when it equals dignity) is hard for those watching. Thank you
Glenda Ferguson, Your piece is very David Sedaris-like. I enjoyed it immensely and laughed out loud. As did a friend in Toronto. Warmly, Mardith L.
Hi Mardith,
Thanks for noticing the likeness to Sedaris! High praise indeed! Many blessings (and I mean that sincerely)
Lisa Moak, I really like the way you used a hairdresser and your “Bangs” to tell the story of the political situation and how difficult it is to navigate. Clever and moving.
Judy Bolton-Fasman, your piece about stages of grief was very moving. As was Mary Chula’s about her sister.
Love the Reunion piece! Truly like a painting a portrait with language. And the ending! Hilarious. Thanks for publishing this piece.