Tag: legacy
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Arguing with the Dead
Arguing With the DeadBegin by calling her by name,not the one etched on the granite monument in front of you,not the one printed on the birth certificate—that temporary name another motherwas forced to dream upin the haze of post-labor fade,in the ecstasy of seeing youfor the first time—something that grew for nine monthsinside this other,and…
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Quiet Remittance
Quiet RemittanceI didn’t follow my father’s instructions this time.I just tucked his ashes into my inner coat pocket,where they warmed me with the good memoriesof pregame paella feasts and watching the Hurricanes,in the built over old Orange Bowl now Miami Marlins Stadium.All the anesthesiologists, the lawyers, his employees—his old crew—performed his scattering script line by…
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Invention: Invention as Inheritance
Courtney Stephens’ Invention moves like smoke curling through rooms of memory: elusive, personal, and strangely ceremonial. It’s less a film than a kind of séance with the archive, gathering fragments of familial detritus—audio reels, feverish patent diagrams, domestic footage—and stitching them into a visual elegy that resists conventional closure. As a narrative, it flirts with…
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Opening the Package
I love the quiet delight that blooms as I unwrap a gift folded with care— how they showed me, instinctively, without words, the furoshiki way: the offering poised with symmetry at each perfect corner, beginning with the triangle (near your beating heart), guiding it to center. then echo outwards (the symmetry in silence); gathering each…
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A Son’s Lament
It’s been over thirty-five years since I felt your motherly touch, and I no longer try to shape a garden of sorrow. Instead, I let the new grass flame, its green distinct from the old cold fire, whose embers tighten their ring with each passing year. I find joy in the crepe myrtles unfolding into…
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Trying on My Dad’s Wingtips
I tried on several of my father’s old Brooks Brother suitsjust before his funeral, trying to save myself the expense of an outfit I didn’t need. Each was too tight on the collars. too short on the sleeves, each crotch inseam strangled my manhood.I had outgrown them all.Almost all of it will go to Goodwill-except…
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On My Father’s House
On my father’s housethree slaves and six horsesdied when the old stable blazeda century and a half ago, and three union and two confederate soldiersslayed each otherin a forgotten skirmisha few years later.Their skeletons were foundtwo years after the war under an uprooted white pine.The county let the field return to forest,except for the old…
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Living the Half Life
The drought has made July linger. The air smells of sewer booty, sweetgum, sassafras, fescue, concrete and asphalt. On this long summer day when the light and heat decide to linger— parents let their children play well into the night on the community’s green. Their laughter and the croaking of frogs in the rention pond,…
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A Small Post Christmas Miracle
He watched his grandma create this wonderful thing stitch by stitch, just for him, in her remaining free time.He was mesmerized by the looping and pulling, the unraveling skeins meldinginto this beautiful blanket of many colors.By November it had started showing flashes of his favorite hues: blue, green, yellow— black stitching separating into squares.He imagined…