Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Lillian, Alabama. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. She has also published a novel, LOST SISTER. Her short story collections, SURVIVAL SKILLS and LOVERS AND LONERS, are available online. STRANGE COMPANY, a collection of short nature essays, is available in paperback as well as digital and audio editions.
For three months of my life, I lived on the west shore of Lake Tahoe in a cabin with no insulation in a town with just one market where I stocked groceries on frozen mornings while my partner helped people on and off ski lifts. There was nothing else to do that winter but feed the wood stove and walk our dog, and of course we had sex, lots of it, because that is what you do when you are 23 and poor and trying not to notice the big mistake you made. We were sick most of that stretch, and the firewood ran out, and even the dog grew snappy, and still we hung on like there was a point. When we finally broke free, loaded the car and headed back to Berkeley, those cold blue days were tied to our bumper, though it took us some time to notice.
To all the creatures yet unknown, moving under miles of ice, inching through slippery caves, crouching in forests on moonless nights: Live on. Let no one find a trace. Keep to the dark side of mountains, swim where no man can follow, burrow as deep as you can. Stay where we don’t belong.
I don’t recall his name or his face, only that he was good looking, not in a steely, square-jawed way, but a softer sort of handsome that suited his shyness. What I do remember is that he was tall and slim and missing half an arm— a tractor accident, his roommate confided.
We never spoke of it, never said much of anything, though he was always polite, grateful, I guess, to have someone doing the legwork, the facetime. His family had a farm in the mountains and that’s where I imagined he tended his secret garden. I stopped by his dorm room a couple times a week to pick up baggies of marijuana which I sold on campus in no time at all, earning shares of my own. I can still see his long back as he weighed each bag, the blue flannel shirt he wore, one sleeve moving swiftly, the other hanging useless.
I could not pick him out of a yearbook, this boy I never knew. Yet there he is, stowed in my past, where the rest of his life can’t hurt him.
With deepest thanks to Robert Eugene Perry, founder of Metaphysical Fox Press, I am announcing the publication of my new poetry chapbook. “In This Vanishing Time” is a collection of 30 poems that explore the human condition and the ways we are shaped by the quiet mysteries that make up our days. Available as a hard copy and an ebook soon, you can find this publication on Amazon.
Please visit the Metaphyical Fox Press on Facebook. Bob Perry is a dream to work with, friendly and professional at once, with a love of literature and an impressive knowledge of the publishing world.
Deep thanks to editor Neil Slevin for publishing my poem “Trip Into Town” in the current issue of Dodging The Rain.
Dodging the Rain evolved into a poetry journal, having been founded and edited by MA graduates of NUI Galway (Áine Ni Mhaoileoin, Rebecca Spicer, and Neil Slevin) and Uversity (Dana Rabe) in 2016. It’s an internet platform that showcases poetry to the world but Galway, Ireland is its spiritual home.
My deep thanks go to editor Debra Ellis Phelps for accepting my poem “Deliverance” for the new Formidable Woman Solace Anthology. In this beautiful collection are 38 pieces that explore nature, the bonds between us and the need to come together, now perhaps more than ever. Additional thanks go to associate editors Sandi Stromberg and Sventlana Litvinchuk, who read, reviewed, commented, and helped choose the work represented here.
In the evening, my cat will occasionally turn her gaze upward and stare at something invisible to me. She will follow this entity with her eyes as it moves, apparently, along the wall just below the ceiling. She does not seem disturbed by what she perceives, just keenly interested. After a moment or two, she will blink and look away, settle back into my lap. Whether the object of her attention disappears or she simply grows bored with it, is anyone’s guess. “It’s their eyes,” a friend says. “They absorb light and then reflect it—like headlights on a road sign. Cats see a whole world we don’t.” I have no idea what my cat sees; I only know that sometimes, in my living room at night, we are not alone.
Recently I met a childhood grief counsellor. She works with preschoolers, children brought to her by over-cautious parents who do not understand that some boys and girls really do see ghosts, only they call them Grammy or Grandpa or Uncle Fred, whatever the case may be, and while the parents are alarmed by these sightings, the children are not. Too young to fear anything but falling or loud noises, they are typically comforted by their visions. Grammy has come to visit, this is all they know. Science has not yet entered their lives. Their world is made of magic, and magic allows for everything. As they get older and start to reason, they lose this perceptual power. By the age of seven it’s all but gone, along with those “imaginary friends” children often describe.
They remember past lives too, the counsellor went on, though only a few are highly verbal and can articulate these memories. One little boy, at two years old, recalled dying in a plane crash. He described the fiery plane and how he couldn’t get out of it, offering so many specifics that researchers were able to “solve” his case by tracing the details back to a pilot who did indeed crash in the ocean during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
What she has learned from children, the counsellor told me, makes her think twice about certain conditions–savant syndrome, child prodigies, even those phantoms the dying speak of. Science is a wonderful thing, she said, and sometimes it’s no help at all.
Jean Ryan 