union forms, grief fractures
A moving exploration of love, loss, and the enduring strength of family told through a series of evocative vignettes.
Coming Winter 2024
Us Unraveled delves into the complexities of marriage, parenthood, and personal growth. It is an emotionally resonant novel that reminds us that even in the face of grief, there is hope for renewal and the possibility of a new beginning.
Going Along, Not Getting Along
Avery
I stare into an empty teacup. Its porcelain edges reflect the ghost of a dream I once shared with a man no longer there. I replace the cup, loving the clack of porcelain, and return to the drone.
A well-meaning neighbour playing matchmaker set me up on a blind date. I never asked for it, but how could it hurt to have a night out?
The dinner is a stage for Michael’s unhealed wounds. He pines for his ex so loudly that her name replaces the restaurant’s background buzz. I sit, swallowed by his persistence in grafting memories of another onto their nascent narrative.
Michael’s laugh holds echoes that are not meant for me. His eyes, when they meet mine, search for a phantom I could never be.
I try to insert my story into the dialogue, but Michael’s premature schemes overwrite any efforts.
“How ’bout I fix the rail on your porch tomorrow? Or we go camping next week?”
These are plans that trespass beyond the boundaries of my cottage’s quaint porch. They’re that reek of desperation and an urgency that does not respect my pace.
Michael is a conductor, and I am reluctant to play a tune I did not choose. Yet, I move through the motions, my voice buried beneath the obligation to a neighbour who wishes me happiness.
I find myself nodding, allowing Michael to weave plans with strands of my time I had not willingly offered.
“Oh, and I invited the neighbours over for pinochle tomorrow, figured you’d like that.”
Each moment with Michael is another blob on a painting I do not recognize. I want to wash it clean to reclaim my image from the undistinguished blend of Michael’s pressing narrative. Yet, the evening concludes with a promise to try once more.
The door closes behind me with a soft click, a signal that silence is not only in the spaces around me but within me. I picture my soul as a jello salad with a bear claw swipe out the side, lime green and still quivering.
Neighbours who think they know better hooked me up with Mr. Rebound. He kept calling me by her name. I wish my people were less delighted with what they did and more caring about what was done.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, a quivering ‘not anyone,’ so I go along and eviscerate from inside. I need to find my voice before it fades entirely into the shadows of compliance.
Plunder Little Pirate
Odessa
My brother’s feet find each step with a thud to the top, where the attic waits. Light through a cracked window casts a shadow over the steamer trunk. William flips the latch with a snap.
Inside, a tangle of memories: toys and pink hair clips, photographs where time stands still. Sepia-tinted, mom and dad are caught in mid-laughter, a joy so foreign that he might mistake them for not being his parents.
He flips through birthdays, holidays, and everyday markers of life captured in the four corners of glossy photos, then pauses at a baby with familiar features. What bounty did this pirate set loose from a chest lost?
“Mom,” he calls, voice tumbling down the stairs. “Ya gotta see this!”
Mother is at the base, looking up as Will bounds down, a photograph clutched in his hand.
“Found something,” he pants, words catching up to his excitement.
She takes the picture with hands that tremble despite herself. “That’s your sister, Odi …” Her voice, usually firm, now flutters.
William’s eyes, wide, take in the softness that has settled on his mother’s face. “Sister? Why didn’t I— I never knew …”
I imagine Mom smiled at his wide-eyed innocence, a child’s curiosity. She must have paused for what, to him, seemed longer than his wait for summer to tell of me dancing through life as a butterfly on a picnic breeze.
“You were meant to know,” Mother says, the lie hollow even to her own ears.
“This is her?” William’s touch is reverent as he points to the baby, who looks back at him.
“Yeah, that’s her,” Mom confirms, “departed before she spread wings.”
A pink bundle, I breathed my last before William drew his first—before mom fell into a grey war, fought behind closed doors.
“How come she’s not here?” comes the question wrapped in innocence.
Our mother draws a long, steadying breath. “She was a comet, William—brief, but how she blazed.”
He looks from the photograph to our mother, seeing a chapter he never knew to miss.
“So, I’m …” he starts.
“Yeah, our family’s a patchwork quilt and some pieces,” she taps the photo lightly, “are just stitched inside.”
William nods, a gesture too grown up for his years. “And we remember?”
Slender fingers rest on one picture—the last before I became a memory—and Mom returns me to my box.
“We remember,” she affirms.
Fuchsia in Black and White
Odessa
The chill of the funeral parlour seeps into the bones of the mourners, a reminder of the thin veil between life and death. Oliver Fairchild, no longer of the world, watches—a spectral spectator in the bleachers of his departure.
In the sea of black, a woman in fuchsia sits—vivid, startling almost, among the grieving. She is serene in the company of sorrow that throbs around her.
Oliver’s presence is drawn to her, an anomaly in his otherwise familiar narrative. Even in death, he finds himself curious.
Eulogies pour forth, narrating Oliver’s life in a way that knots his gut. Avery stands, her posture all composure, her voice betraying the tremble of emotion. She speaks of paths converged and diverged, woven and unraveled.
William’s there with his bride, casting long shadows with quiet strength. “He was the master of stories,” Will’s voice rings out, “and our lives—his best tales.”
Oliver’s gaze returns to the polished oak box. It’s him—and yet, it isn’t. Such finality jars him.
The woman in fuchsia rises, whispers something to Avery that has his widow nodding, though no one hears.
“A dance,” Oliver hears himself say, despite knowing the absurdity of it. “That’s what we should have—a celebration, not this … this pageantry of grief.”
The woman in fuchsia turns, locking eyes with him—or through him.
It’s me, dad, Missy O as I might have become, an answer to the question you haven’t asked.
The crowd shifts, people bend to get a last look at him—or rather, the last of him. They see the wood, the gloss, the stillness. They don’t see the dance of life that still twists the essence of Oliver.
“Nora,” Avery’s voice cuts through the low murmurs, “he’d have hated this fuss.” Then adds with a short-lived smile, “… so glad that’s just what we gave him, ol’ bastard, how I loved him.”
Nora nods solemnly but stifles the smile.
In the after-hum, as the parlour empties, Oliver feels the invite in my touch—a beckoning to the next. We stand together, past father and lost daughter.
