One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

“You—Belsum—brought a lot of jobs, a lot of business to town. You had big plans. GL606 was something to make something else better or cheaper. I never totally understood how or what. Before you even started production, though, you had dozens of companies signed up to buy it to put it in whatever they made. It was one of those things, between one thing and another thing, you know?”

don’t have to lay out these arguments. Mab knows them as well as I do. But I don’t have to refute them either. I will not let my eyes leave hers to find my Voice, but if I did I would refuse, come what may, to wait here all alone. I don’t need to, though. She knows that too. And mad though it is, she does not protest—not with words, not with her eyes, not even in her heart of hearts (for I can see there too). She holds my gaze and nods. They will not leave me behind. It is an insane risk and an unnecessary one and a shattering act of faith and loyalty and stupidity and love. But my chair has to stay. My Voice too. And without them, I am stood down, immobilized, silenced, at once firmly anchored and frantically unmoored. It is, simply and terribly, leaving a part of myself behind.

it knew, would this river be angry or grateful to return to its path, its rightful way forward, free from diversion, unencumbered by the violent service into which it has been pressed all these lonely years? It got its share of the vitriol, but the river was never to blame. Now it gets to return to the place where it is natural and appreciated and belongs. Now it gets to go back home.

Our destory is this: We are no longer waiting, imagining justice deferred but heralded, on its way. We are no longer left behind, forgotten but unable to forget. We have been wronged, but we are no longer wrong, no longer broken, no longer immovable and wishing ourselves other than we are. Our water is no longer green and no longer toxic because that water has flowed on, and so have that town, those people, that history, not gone but diluted, far away, and flowing farther every moment. We get to rest now, some of us. And others of us? We’re just getting started. Because the flip side of our destory is the one not yet written, the one that happens next.

relaunch the Herald Bourne. There is no staff. There is no money to print it. But there is the internet, however slow. And there is me, however slow as well, to write and research and listen and understand, me to give voice, to be there. To be here.

And I keep writing. For I can write as well as anyone, writing requiring but one well-honed brain, a ranging imagination, a determined mind, and a resilient and wide-open heart. For I have voice to give we voiceless few. Or maybe “voiceless” is too strong. Undervoiced, let’s say. I have perspective. Opinions. Ideas.