If the Creek Don't Rise

by Leah Weiss

“Carly,

weeping willow

I don’t see me no more in that slice of looking glass. It’s a strange feeling thinking the face in the mirror is somebody else. I half think to see her lips move to talk and mine stay closed, or the other way round.

I thought I was smart and loved a bad man turned good. I’ve been on a losing streak a long time.

I was a fool hanging hope on a weak man I thought would stand tall if we got married.

Truth is, sometimes I need to hear a voice even if it’s mine.

Sleep is gonna come. It always does, but so do rememberings. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna go. Sometimes they take me places I don’t wanna leave. I never know where I’m going when I climb in this featherbed.

There’s no easy rest for the weary.

pasties

An ethical and morally strong individual,

“How can I leave now?” I looked away, not naming the sadness that tainted my daddy’s life. “You need me. Mama needs me. I need me…here.” “We’ll do fine. Folks will help out like always. If I can, I’ll take my time leaving this earth. I’ll write every week and keep you up on things. Don’t want you to fret your time at seminary about home matters. Besides, Son, this isn’t about my life; it’s about yours.”

My mind struggled with the gift I was being given.

Carly

TJ.

That sour taste stays with remembering.

How could a body just pick up and go somewhere strange if somebody missed her back there?

I head to a place where only one person may want me, leaving a place where only one person will miss me.

Rain pounds around me and obliterates here and takes me back to there.

I needed to break from this place for many reasons, mostly because I didn’t fit.

Gloria

I suddenly know that this primitive place and Eli Perkins and these plain people are important to me for reasons that aren’t perfectly clear. That the restlessness I’ve felt all my life has started to subside and is being replaced by a flutter in my belly of excitement and wonder. Could I be on the right path at last?

Do you remember all the years I struggled to fit in at other places? How I longed to make a difference but felt I always fell short or was spinning my wheels, fighting futile battles? Do you remember all the self-doubts that plagued me before I came here, and all the fears and headaches that followed me to this end of the world? They’re gone.

I realize, with a quickened pulse, I feel more purposeful, accepted, and liberated in this community than anywhere else.

Does she see how pathetic he is? Does she see he is a war she can never win?

“There won’t no live baby,” Sadie says as she works her way across the stony shore, heading back up the hill. “Just a pile of hope.”

October 10,

“You have talents you haven’t begun to understand. Once you do, the rest will come easily.”

Carly if it was a girl

“I find I love my cabin, the challenges, the solitude, the beauty of this place. I lived in a crowd and thought I belonged in a crowd, but—surprise—I’m more content on my own.”

look it.

Dooley

“Larry,