The final breakdown coincides, it’s said, with his botched intervention in the savage beating of a horse, the sight of which perhaps brought to mind the pedagogical methods employed long ago by Dad, the good pastor. The final train journey home is uneventful, safe arrival ensured by the company of burly individuals who, while not given to deep speculation, observe with increasing fascination the professor’s inability to resist removing a small mirror from the inside pocket of his jacket every few minutes and study minutely, with an expression of horrified astonishment, his own face. When questioned at last regarding this activity, or imagining he has thus been questioned, he replies, or so it seems, with a query of his own, succinctly posed: Is it true that I am here?

Greens compete. Sometimes achieve
a standing in browns, those snarled, long-gones.
Greens inflect themselves to seem
more local, abiding of customs, native.
They claim, just by leaning, rights
to air and light, and make onlookers tilt this way,
that way, align with, feel the strain of growing.
They hold, the shadiest among them, drops
of rain long after the rain has passed.
What can move around the solid chain-
link fence, enfold, make of such an imposition
a ladder up? Greens apply themselves…

Mud splatters my white socks as my shoes land in a puddle. It’s rainy season in northern Malawi, a small African country located in the center of the Rift Valley, a geological fracture extending from Ethiopia to Mozambique. Today, I am undergoing a crash course in water and sanitation and learning about the new and improved water supply system for Livingstonia, a Presbyterian mission overlooking Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa.

— EXCERPT FROM Drops of Change
BY Toccoa Switzer

These days I am surprised to see my own face when I look in the mirror, so much time do I spend looking at Franny’s. We wear each other’s clothes and read each other’s books by day, she is my early morning and late night phone call, the person I reach for in my sleep. She tells me stories of kissing the movie star, and as she tells me she reaches out for me to draw me in to her, showing me how he held her, how he touched her.

— EXCERPT FROM Person Lessons
BY Ellen O’Connell

Can you believe that we are north of somewhere, considering the slice of weather during this time of year? It is a comfortable respite in here, I must say. It makes sense, of course. You cannot have covers bending and pages succumbing to foxing and browning from sustained heat and humidity. Such book damage would surely not be good for business. Don’t worry, by the way. I have not stopped in for several years, it has probably even been a decade back, but I am not the kind of person who walks in, gushes over loving the smell of books, but never buys anything, and darts back out the door in less than a minute.

— EXCERPT FROM What Do You Say to a Shadow?
BY Michael Allen Zell

Time has always been the greatest wonder for me. Why is it now, but not then? Why did he die, while she was born? “And those weeping,” and “a sound from moving water”… I had poured out all of these in “Expression,” a poem I wrote in October 1981 in Guangzhou. Why would I suddenly stop my pen (and stop writing poetry) for fifteen years, and then suddenly begin to write anew in 2007? This mystery is closely associated with time: it makes me ponder, but without explanation. Yet it is often the miracle of time that summons me, luring me closely behind it. I write, I stop, I write again…

Growing up, I actually wanted to become a National Geographic photographer, but my parents discouraged it due to the instability of earning an income. My second choice was a professional career which would provide a steady income and involve some aspect of dealing with vision. Thus, what better work than being an optometrist — gaining an understanding of optics and helping people with their vision. As my practice and career as an optometrist became more established, I began to venture back to photography and travel on a part-time yet serious and consistent basis, this time using both my photography and optometry skills to help people that are less fortunate in the world.

They left all at once.

…we saw that the spaces our mothers had inhabited were not just empty; they contained the presence of our mothers’ absence.

There was no warning, or none that we could read. We were only children, and our fathers were only their helpless selves.

One minute, our mothers were near us, making the noises of pots and pans in the kitchen, or they were sitting talking with cousins at the family barbecue, or they were arguing with us about the mess we’d made, or they said they were just taking a quick nap, or they were walking with us through the bright clamor of the mall — and then the next minute they were gone. Our mothers were not in the kitchen, not in a lawn chair, not slamming doors, not in their bedrooms, not in any of the stores….

— EXCERPT FROM Our Mothers Left Us
BY David Harris Ebenbach