Precipice: The Literary Anthology of Write on Edge, Volume 3

By Write on Edge

The third annual publication of Precipice: The Literary Anthology of Write on Edge explores the concept of boundaries in short stories, poetry, and memoir by a selection of authors from the Write on Edge community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bannerwing Books
• Release date: Jul 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311090331

Write on Edge

Write on Edge: where inspiration meets community.Write on Edge (formerly The Red Dress Club) was created as a place for writers to gather, exchange ideas and learn something about the art of storytelling.We welcome any and all writers, regardless of level – anyone interested in writing has a place here. We are also open to writers of all genres: Fiction or non-fiction. Fantasy, young adult, chick lit, memoir – there are no limits.Even though we have changed our name, we still are inspired by a blog post by Jenny of The Bloggess about a red dress – thus the name of this blog.Jenny wrote:“I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies. I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be. And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”. Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better. Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it.”For many of us, our Red Dress is our dream to become a published writer. Maybe we just need a little extra motivation.Maybe we just have to try to Write on Edge.

Book preview

Precipice

Precipice

The Literary Anthology of Write on Edge, Volume III

Edited by Cameron D. Garriepy

Edited by Angela Amman

Edited by Mandy Dawson

Bannerwing Books

Precipice

Volume III

Copyright © 2014 Write on Edge

Bannerwing Books

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First printing rights granted by the authors.

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All rights reserved.

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Cover Design © 2014 Write on Edge and Bannerwing Books

Cover image used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence via Unplash.com

Thank you for downloading this ebook. Although this is a DRM-free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the authors, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

Staff Emeritus

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Founding Editors: Cheryl Rosenberg, Ericka Clay

Contributors: Nichole Beaudry, Kate Sluiter, Galit Breen, Nancy Campbell, John Batzer

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Contributing Authors

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Elaine Alguire • Habiba Danyal Barry

Duffy Batzer • Valerie Boersma

Shelton Keys Dunning • Sara Healy

Dina Honour • Ashley Kagaoan

Morgan Kellum • Angie Kinghorn

Melissa Kirtley • Laura Lord

Andrea Mowery • Kirsten A. Piccini

Kristin Shaw • Janice Wilberg

Jennifer P. Williams • Liz Zimmers

Acknowledgments

The Editorial Staff would like to thank everyone whose contributions to both The Red Dress Club and Write on Edge have made Precipice possible.

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Our gratitude knows no boundaries.

Contents

Stargazing

Fiction

The Space Between Our Names

Sedition

Shallott

The Tracks

In My Day

The Love Letter

Words We Never Say

Fool for Love

Lake Effect

Love

Memoir

The Invisible Line

Red Flag Burned

The Visit

Do You Know?

Cheek to Cheek

Walk Away

Lines

About the Contributors

About Write on Edge

About the Publisher

The Precipice Collection

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced.

What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

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― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Stargazing

by Kristen A. Piccini

The universe aligns to separate our passionate kisses

but

optimism swirls in the cosmos;

a solar commixture of hydrogen, helium and magic.

So meet me there, halfway to heaven;

with our souls in space; weaving, spinning against the inky background,

trailing stardust in our wake,

where we can dupe the time continuum with intimate prose.

If I can’t have you, here on the ground, visit my (day) dreams instead; satisfy my yearning with a

sweet colloquy whispered between your poetic stanzas.

That is where I always look to find you, hidden amid reality and a reason to believe.

Fiction

The Space Between Our Names

Dina Honour

Together, Laura and I stepped through the looking glass of childhood straight into the rabbit hole of adolescence. We were more than simply best friends. We were Siamese spirits, conjoined souls, sharing our hopes and fears and birthday candle wishes, finishing each other’s sentences, chasing our dreams like fireflies around the banks and bends of our small, river town. Even our names were linked. When people spoke of us, when they spoke to us, one name followed the other without pause or breath in between. KimandLaura, LauraandKim.

We met at Colleen Malloy’s eleventh birthday party. When I reach back and search those long ago memories, the ones buried deep below first crushes and first kisses, beneath other highlights and lowlights of growing up, I can’t remember Laura before the moment I met her. Though we went to the same school, though we must have had friends in common, I can’t place her. In my memory it’s as if she simply appears at my side, an extension of myself — a best friend sprung fully formed from the surf. Venus rising from the school yard asphalt.

Almost overnight we became inseparable, gluing ourselves to one another in the intense way of eleven-year-old girls. Middle school was looming, it’s somber, flat, brick presence tinting everything around us with a little more importance. We clung to each other, making blood sister promises to stick together in new and uncharted territory. We would be the Lewis and Clark of Wampuset Middle School, blazing a trail, pushing ahead.

We forged through those middle school years, leaving behind bits and pieces of our grade-school selves. We learned how to slow dance with boys, our hands on their shoulders, theirs hooked just above our tailbones. We learned the rituals of lunchtime: how to save a seat, which hot lunches to avoid. We dodged spitballs, slicked our lips with Bonne Belle, feathered our hair in pink and white tiled bathrooms. We suffered through the embarrassment of Health Ed., the horrors of gym class, the confusion of an expanding universe of emotions and hormones. Side by side it seemed, if not easy, then at least bearable.

On weekends, free from homework and history lessons, we rode our bikes, bumping roughshod through the woods that separated our houses. The beginning trickle of the Shawmut River meandered through our town, its one and only claim to fame, and the concrete bridge that spanned the narrow flow became our meeting point. A forever friend HQ, complete with its own code. Two rings of the telephone meant ‘meet me at the bridge’.

On damp, summer nights we sat watching a cloudless sky for shooting stars, lying back on the prickly grass of the river bank until we couldn’t take the mosquitoes any more. The bridge is where Laura told me about her father, about how he passed out on the sofa, empty beer bottles littering the house. It is where I told her my parents were getting a divorce. It is where we confessed and wondered and cried and laughed. It’s where we made secret pacts and whispered wishes in the dark. It is where we wrote our loves and desires and dreams on scraps of notebook paper, releasing them into the wind to be carried away by the slow moving water, away from us, toward something bigger, something better.

As teenagers we felt hemmed in by borders and boredom, the small mindedness of small town life. We fantasized of leaving it all in our wake. We would follow the river toward those city lights, rent an apartment, go to college, get jobs. I would write for a newspaper. Laura would open a boutique. Our husbands would be best friends, and we’d all live together in a giant town house. It never occurred to us to look for a fault line in the landscape of our dreams. It never occurred to us that what you wish for doesn’t always come true.

All those paper secrets fluttering in the wind. All those wished upon stars. All the birthday candles and pennies and coins in the fountain. So very many wishes.

In high school Laura chose French, and I chose Spanish. I joined the school newspaper, and Laura took design. It was the first time we had stretched the reach of our bond, tested its strength, let it out bit by bit, like kite string from a spool, but always, we came springing back to one another. But for the first time there was a breath between our names, a space. Kim and Laura. Laura and Kim.

We caught up at lunchtime, sitting across from one another on orange button seats, stuffing our faces with greasy fries and chocolate milk, gossiping about cheerleaders and jocks: who got caught smoking behind the bleachers, who was having sex in their boyfriend’s basement. We met by the bridge, drinking wine coolers stolen from my parent’s fridge, sneaking cigarettes, always careful to roll clumps of damp grass between our fingers to mask the smell. The where, what, and who of our dreams, secret words scribbled on notebook scraps, changed as we did, fluid as the river below us, but always inclusive, always sharing some small part.

When Laura met Brad, the invisible bond between us grew taut. We let it out, gave it slack, but it began to sag under the weight of a third person. At first, Laura tried to include him. He sat with us at lunch, his arm draped possessively around Laura’s shoulder. But it wasn’t long before three became two once again, except now it was Laura and Brad, Brad and Laura. My name, like my place by Laura’s side, once so assured and expected, so assumed and taken for granted, excised in one clean slice.

They sat by themselves — away from me, away from everyone. There were whispers behind locker doors: they were having sex, they were smoking pot, skipping class. There were rumors that he pushed her around, roughed her up. I reached out, but she eluded. There were days she didn’t come to school at all, didn’t answer her phone, returning two days later with thicker makeup, more eyeshadow, an excuse. She avoided me, would not take my calls. At times it was like a physical absence — a missing limb, a skipped heartbeat. After a while, when the hurt gave way to anger, I simply stopped trying. My sight was blinkered, my hearing muffled by my own heartbeats and heartaches. She became a ghost in the hallways, something I would see out of the corner of my eye while I sat doodling in class. Just like that she fluttered away from me, her name caught on the wind.

The summer before our senior year I worked stamping invoices and filing carbon copies in gray, metal cabinets. There was plenty of time to think, to muse, to piece together the breadcrumbs of our story. I thought about Laura, about Brad, about all the things said and unsaid in the