Sunday Shorts

DRIBBLE

Liminal Spaces

by Melissa Jo Williams, Canada

I've been thinking a lot about transience. Maybe it's the morphine. Maybe it's the pain

when the morphine pump runs dry. I've been thinking about shadows, of liminal spaces, of the tapering, narrow path under the River Birch canopy, of its peeling yellow bark that holds on, even through winter.

DRABBLE

Heart in a Box

by Kathryn Silver-Hajo, USA

| pull the leaf from its box, edges slightly curled, heart-shaped core roseate, as | found

it one year after you passed. Nestled in my palm, it beats with the secrets it conceals. And I’m left with all the questions that remained unspoken when you were alive yet can

now only wonder about. Why you carried such sadness, shrank from hard truths, broke

our family into a thousand bits. | replace the delicate heart in its tomb, hoping to quiet

its urgent pulsing. You are free now, but what might you have revealed if I’d found the

courage to ask?