In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

190 the widows’ handbook How I Carry You “Ariel” At grief support, they gave me a piece of petrified stone, polished, to comfort me; I wrote “adventure” on it, for that is how I want to remember you— or so I said. But that stone speaks so much more to me; when we would creek-walk you would pick up stones, wet so they looked polished, all their colors revealed, mused as to their stories and how it ended up there. Wood, rock. Water. A palm-size fragment shaped by nature. This stone tells your story though it never cradled in your hand; it started as wood, malleable, the sapling grew, a child of the earth lived in forests—as you did when you ran breathing scents of Douglas fir. It was a companion of deer, of elk, of bear. And when pressure came to bear down on it, it became more stable, more solid changing its substance but not its body; its grain is still there but it will not give way. Then polished, all its color, its grain revealed as if just picked up from the water. Wood. Stone. Water: coping (more or less) 191 transient into something almost eternal that would endure. I imagine that it is a fragment of you nestled in my palm: That is how I remember you. ...

Share