by Joe Lugara
Abscission
For Terri
When summer ended, we returned
to the woods. There was a white oak
halfway down the slope, with six strong
branches that we could reach. I climbed
as high as I could, ‘til I scared myself.
You took the lowest limb, close
to the ground, safe and secure.
And it went on this way for decades:
I took risks, tempting fate a thousand ways. You
studied accounting. You liked the certainty of one
correct answer. I was all ambiguity and reckless abandon.
You fell in love with your college sweetheart,
married the man. I fell in love with a new man
once a year, even after my marriage. You:
a steady hand, a plowed field, as predictable
as sunrise.
When you found the lump in your breast,
you were practical about the whole business;
arranged your work, kids’ sports practices,
Sunday school lessons, so no one would be
inconvenienced as your body battled itself.
Your hair deciduous, long toffee-colored strands
circled the bathroom sink. Everything that wasn’t
necessary, you shed. I came to visit, held your hand,
laughed as we told stories that bored our teenagers.
Scientists say that trees talk to one another,
share water and sugar to keep each other alive,
create space enough for each to grow their treetops wide and tall.
Your absence tears at my roots. Where
you once stood, steady and strong, now
an opening in the tree canopy,
an empty space next to me
only a shaft of sunlight beaming down.
A 2022 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Marceline White’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Harpy Hybrid, Scrawl Place, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, Snapdragon, Little Patuxent Review, Please See Me, Quaranzine, Gingerbread House, The Free State Review, and The Loch Raven Review and others; anthologies include Ancient Party: Collaborations in Baltimore, 2000-2010, and Life in Me Like Grass on Fire. Essays, op-eds, and other writing has appeared in Woman’s Day, Parents magazine, Success magazine, Baltimore Fishbowl, Baltimore Sun, and Mother Jones. An economic justice activist, she is a contributing author to two books on gender and globalization and her policy writing is widely disseminated. When not writing or engaged in activism, she can be found learning how to better serve her two cats, posting too many pictures of her garden on social media, and reminding her son to text her when he arrives at the party. Find her at https://marcelinewhitewrites.com/ and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Joe Lugara is a U.S.-based artist who took up photography and painting as a boy after his father discarded them as hobbies. His works depict odd forms and objects, inexplicable phenomena, and fantastic dreamscapes, taking as their basis horror and science fiction films produced from the 1930s through the late 1960s. Mr. Lugara’s work has been featured in more than 20 publications and has appeared in numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries in the New York Metropolitan Area. His painting series “Scrutiny” was the focus of a 55-work solo exhibition at the Noyes Museum of Art in his home state of New Jersey in 2022.His works can be viewed at Instagram and Facebook.