The Phoenix Project - Second Chance Lit, April 23, 2021*

Plum Cake and Vertigo

Excerpt:

We were sorting through photographs. The funeral was over: dishes cleaned, tablecloths put away, mementos divvied among the cousins, the grandchildren. The house had been cleaned. Clothes sent away. Still there remained a box of photographs; corners tattered, sepia-tones darkening. There were photos of first loves and distant relatives and forgotten neighborhood friends. We talked over wine and Irish coffee about who those strangers were, how they haunted the family and the generations to come. But memory fades, creates new connections, red herrings to give names to those no one remembers.

At the bottom of the box was a photograph of a child…

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originally appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos Journal, March 2016