Every Precious and Fragile Thing

by Barbara Davis

Like many of her colleagues, she saw social work as a calling.

hope makes the unbearable bearable, and so I’ve chosen hope.

One by one, she scanned the spines lined up on the shelves, smiling whenever she came across a familiar title, as if spotting an old friend in a crowd of strangers.

But the focal point of the piece is the butterfly resting in her open palm, its velvety black-and-blue wings half-spread.