Sidney Stevens                                                                                              

Reconstructing Raven

George Belknap headed slowly out of Bucholtzville after school and turned onto Timmons Road toward home. It was later than usual; the sun had already sunk, and it was hard to follow the shadowy road. Still, all in all, a good day of teaching. Day One of the painting unit—George’s favorite part of the high school art curriculum. He always saved the best for last. The only glitch: no sink in his classroom. Meaning two hours spent rinsing brushes in the men’s room and dumping coffee cans of sludgy, green-brown water. Even Raven Brooks, his star pupil who often remained after school for conversations about art, didn’t stay to help. She’d left in a hurry, something about feeling ill.

George crunched away disappointment. He had a long evening ahead, and nothing prepared for dinner. Another night of canned soup.

At the railroad crossing near Steinman Road, George spied something odd illuminated in his headlights, a Yield sign altered to read, “Yield (To None But Love).” At the bottom someone had painted a tilted brown eye being swallowed into the fleshy orifice-like furrow of a glowing blood-red heart.

George almost drove off the road. Another defaced sign. Who in the world was responsible? Not evil exactly—the signs appearing around town spoke of love and truth, but in a perturbing, provocative way that George found unseemly and unsettling. Like Mother Teresa sporting a beaded Valentino gown to care for the sick. Or Jesus screeching up in a gleaming black Corvette to turn water into wine.

George sped off, hands clenching the steering wheel. It was wrong to deface public property. Mere graffiti, not high art, designed to bait. Just like it was bad form for Mother Teresa and Jesus to resort to theatrics. A titillating sight perhaps, but show-offy and profoundly unnecessary—their holiness most purely demonstrated through foot travel and simple, understated robes, not sports cars and designer wear.

And yet something about this public art tickled another part of George. The works were surprisingly accomplished, the messages profound. Their awful brazenness stirred him—pure joy and unfettered creativity that didn’t give one whit what the world thought. If only his high school art students displayed half the nerve to pull off such audacious expression. If only he could too in his own art.

George turned into the narrow driveway of his small ranch house clustered along Timmons Road with four others just like it. Inside, he moved from room to room, switching on lights. How dark it seemed without Gretchen. He emptied a can of Campbell’s Beef and Barley soup into an oversized bowl to microwave. Of course he’d never admit to admiring the signs. Such lawless and unrestrained decadence was completely inappropriate. He was a respected teacher and community leader. Even so, naughty delight lingered, and with it an image that wouldn’t leave—blackbirds baked in a pie covered in crust and carved with a heart. A big doughy heart, not unlike the one he’d just seen. The heart in Raven’s newest painting, her latest effort to expand, at his urging, beyond her profoundly accurate lifelike renderings of faces and animals.

Raven’s heart remained in George’s mind as he hunkered in his kitchen sipping hot soup and scrolling through news on his phone. A soft speck of radiance he hadn’t felt in who knows how long. Like a spotless new art canvas or the pristine colors of freshly opened acrylic paints. Creation about to commence—everything still possible.

Had his urgings finally penetrated Raven’s skull and taken root? Hard to imagine her vandalizing signs in the wee hours of night. A fantastical possibility so unlikely—and exhilarating—that George allowed it into his dreams later as he fell asleep in front of the TV, lights still on, alone in his recliner.

###

There were times when nothing seemed real to Raven, as if some membrane that surrounded her, that invisible shield that retained her shape in solid form, kept her saying and doing the right things, started splitting open, and all her unexamined feelings and thoughts began hemorrhaging out in ugly piles of unidentifiable muck. Even when a piece of inner detritus poked up, clearly accessible, Raven never grabbed hold to see what it was or tried sorting through the seething stew. Instead, she simply squeezed her membrane back together, forcing everything inside again where the gloppy mix could continue bubbling below awareness and she could remain unrealized for a while longer. Floating in blessed nothingness.

This system worked, for the most part, but lately these episodes had intensified—the most recent being the worst. For the first time since the ruptures began, Raven couldn’t keep from acting out. Not only did she fail to come home for dinner with Terri, her mother, but she also lied to Mr. Belknap about feeling sick and begged off staying late to discuss art and the talent he insisted she possessed in spades. Instead, she exited the high school building into the April sun, backpack slung over her shoulder, and climbed into Cullen Kriebel’s beat-up black Corolla, along with Seneca Metzger and Joey Marcaro, to ride the hilly roads outside Bucholtzville. It was all the worse for two reasons: One, it was Terri’s birthday. And, two, Raven enjoyed her classmates far more than she’d enjoyed her mother in months—despite the fact that all three were stoned silly and she’d never spoken to any of them in her life.

“Where to?” Cullen asked as Raven settled into the back seat with Seneca.

“Wherever the hell we end up,” she said, grinning.

Uncharacteristically bold for Raven, who rarely spoke to people she didn’t know. It wasn’t because she decided to get high either; she’d never smoked weed, despite being a junior in high school, and didn’t intend to quite yet. It had more to do with not having friends. Acquaintances, yes, kids she spoke to in class, but no real friends, not the kind you brought home or trusted with deep confidences. Riding around in an aromal haze with regular kids was a taste of normal, a momentary touch of belonging that had always eluded Raven. Emboldening.

“I like your hair,” Seneca said.

Raven pretended to grab a long lock and snip it off, then another, invisible strands that she’d, in fact, snipped off for real just that morning. Then she rolled down her window, wind blasting her newly cropped hair, and made like she was tossing out the entire mess.

“Hell yeah,” Joey said, pumping his fist in the air.

Raven opened her backpack and flung out papers too—real math homework, geography, whatever she had.

“Faster,” she commanded, and Cullen gunned the engine, hooting uproariously as they raced through the countryside. If only Raven could stay cocooned here indefinitely, forestall going home. There was no explaining her hair to Terri, sable-colored waves her mother wished were her own. She’d said it often. And how to account for this joyride? On Terri’s birthday, no less. It all smacked of defiance. Which is exactly what it was, defiance Raven could no longer subdue.

As darkness came, the car passed a Yield sign at the railroad crossing by Steinman Road, the same one George Belknap had seen moments before: “Yield (To None but Love).”

“Creepy,” murmured Seneca.

But Raven was mesmerized, shivering at the open eye descending into the unutterably tender folds of all-consuming love—fully awake and aware, the eye of a watching universe. So beautiful, like all the other mysterious signs, each with a different message and eye.

“Let’s get outta here,” Joey muttered to Cullen.

Why were the signs so disconcerting to others? Why not to Raven, who was inexplicably buoyed? For her, they dredged up hope, not uneasiness. Heartening feelings she sensed deep within herself but couldn’t quite touch. Why was she so different?

Cullen pulled up in front of Terri’s vintage toy repair shop on the corner of Wilbur and Main. “Maybe we can chill again,” he said as Raven climbed out.

She studied his wasted face, aglow in the dashboard lights, knowing she never would. “Maybe,” she said. It’s not that she didn’t like him. She did. And the others too. They were amiable and funny, exuberant in their pursuit of a good time. But Raven wasn’t the same, not at all the same. The mysterious signs didn’t vibrate for them the way they did for her.

“Maybe,” Raven said again and turned toward the shop. It was closed for the night, but a soft light shone inside where Terri often worked late. Including tonight, alone on her birthday.

Raven slipped in the side door and upstairs to the dark apartment. It smelled of cat pee and stale coffee. She tiptoed across the bare wood floor, hoping Terri didn’t hear from below, and collapsed on the sagging sofa. Milton Bradley, their fourteen-year-old tabby cat, padded silently through the dark and settled on her lap, purring.

Raven’s head throbbed. There simply was no way of explaining why life felt so flat and colorless. In need of one of Terri’s Victorian stereoscopes to add vitality, depth and three-dimensionality to her spiritless left- and right-eye views of the world.

Just about everything was wrong. Terri, the person Raven needed most, had melted away, a candle burned to wax puddle. During school, she could escape her mother’s terrible silences, which had deepened in recent months. Dinners, though, were agonizing, nothing but silverware clinking on plates. Terri rarely asked Raven about her day or whether she had homework or any of the needling questions she once asked. What Raven would give now for just one question, any question. Terri rarely shared news about her work either or her feelings or much of anything at all, even when queried.

Raven flopped on her side and smashed a musty pillow over her head. Milton Bradley leapt to the floor. How could she stay here in the waning light of Terri’s world, so small and suffocating it seemed on the verge of implosion? There were reasons. Of course. Raven knew them all—the death of her dad, Luther, in a speed-boat accident on Suter Lake seven years ago. Terri’s dreadful grief, her struggle to expand the toy-repair shop, innovate, find new ways to survive financially. Raven understood what Terri had gone through and still endured. She was enduring it too. But increasingly on her own. Over time, the powerful force-field of her mother’s love had simply lost its magic gravitational pull, like a magnet barely able to hold the smallest metal shavings to its surface. Raven couldn’t locate Terri’s firm center anymore, couldn’t feel the caring that once kept her safe, couldn’t grasp what her mother wanted, or whether she loved anything much at all anymore, including Raven.

And how to deal with Mr. Belknap? Raven clenched her teeth. Talk, talk, push, push. “Draw this,” “Use more sienna.” “Paint like Matisse.” “Dream like Cezanne.” “Find your own style.” It’s true his continual directives had spurred her to try capturing more than the world’s surface. But the stretch didn’t feel like hers. Find your own style—by mimicking the masterpieces of others. That’s what Mr. Belknap really meant. But how could Raven hear her own voice above the clamor of so many others?

Terri creaked upstairs later, trailed by the acrid odor of paint and adhesives. Raven lay still, holding her breath until Terri closed her bedroom door, then quietly snuck out so she wouldn’t have to explain herself in the morning.

###

George woke feeling lighter than he had in ages. Light enough even to enter the cramped bedroom that served as his art studio. Paintings half finished. Nothing he remotely liked. Derivative, uninspired. Not a painting sold in six years.

Today, though, George could stare it all down without slamming the door. Talent vanished, swinging between rage and silence, nothing in between. Death of artistic expression. Gretchen finally gave up. Two loves gone. Art and her.

Today, though, George could abide his grief, its sting miraculously muted. Maybe he’d never sell another painting or replace Gretchen, but today he could bear it. There were other avenues for expression and love. At least that’s how it seemed this morning. George could mold artistic talent—like he was with Raven. There were budding Monets and Michelangelos waiting to be discovered, even here in northeast Pennsylvania, in godforsaken Bucholtzville. This was his calling now—a life of sacrifice, put on earth to inspire artistic greatness wherever it might lurk.

When George arrived at school, he retrieved Raven’s blackbird painting from the drying rack. Indeed, the heart was similar to the one by the railroad tracks. Similar enough. Her execution might still skew ultra-realistic. And she’d chosen a nursery rhyme, of all things—art lite. But still, it was a foray into painting outside the lines, a tentative step into imagination. Raven was coming along, reaching beyond her comfortable boundaries, freeing herself to record not just what stood before her but the invisible as well—feelings and moods, nuances of changing light and color, life’s movement through the world. All under his tutelage. It was possible she really was the mastermind behind the signs.

Throughout the day, George’s certainty ballooned, keeping him aloft like helium gas. For the first time in months he felt relief from the heaviness of his world. Students came and went, generic faces, generic art. George bided his time, ushering along mediocrity, mustering encouragement when needed. Until sixth period when Raven arrived.

“Nice work on the blackbirds,” he said, keeping his voice steady, toning down excitement. Staying cool.

She wouldn’t look at him, clearly embarrassed by his praise, as always. Humble. “Thanks,” she mumbled and hurried to her desk.

During class, George admired Raven’s concentration, the many expressions sweeping her face like cloud shadows across a landscape. The hair cut was a nice touch, too. Punk? Goth? It was edgy. Befitting an artist deep in the throes of creation, taking risks, fashioning her artistic voice and look. Plotting her next bold statement, perhaps a new sign. No doubts holding her back.

George refrained from hovering too close, giving Raven space, his protégé, his student masterpiece coming to fruition, gelling into everything he’d envisioned when he first recognized her genius last year. His own artistic gifts might have flat-lined, but he carried an exquisite eye for talent in others. Real talent. That was his talent. So what if Raven had chosen street art instead of something grander? You couldn’t control how brilliance manifested. Whatever her medium and proclivities, Raven, his creation, had taken flight. A breaker of artistic rules, teller of truths, creator of revolutionary public art. She was on the rise.

###

Raven entered her mother’s shop after school. It was like ducking into a dank cave after the bright bustle outside. Terri looked up from her worktable in back.

“This is a surprise,” she said, pushing magnifying glasses to the top of her head. Her mousy hair hung limply over her shoulders, as though she hadn’t brushed it today.

“What’re you working on?” Raven asked, keeping her voice conversational like it used to be. Like daughters talk to their moms. She’d need to acknowledge Terri’s birthday, her nonappearance, but what could she say?

Terri held up an antique tin circus clown. Its pointy scarlet hat was partially crushed and the paint chipped. “Big collector in Switzerland wants this restored, along with the original box. Real money in repairing boxes … who knew?” Terri shrugged—it was more than she’d said in weeks. She began gently prying off the clown’s damaged hat. “How are things?” she asked without looking up.

“Good,” Raven said.

“Anything new?”

“Not really.”

Terri’s mouth remained open like she wanted to say more, but she only nodded, silence hanging between them.

“I’m sorry,” Raven finally said. Her voice echoed off musty shelves of dolls and stuffed animals, train sets and mechanical banks. All waiting for their next round at life. Raven was waiting too—for more from Terri, more attention, more anything.

“What’s done is done,” Terri said softly, frown lines deepening, a hint of hurt in her after-breath.

Raven dug into her backpack and handed Terri a self-portrait, pen and ink with watercolor, an experiment undertaken outside school. A real departure from hyper-realism. Face off-kilter, eyes askew, mouth small and pinched, cheek bones pointed, nose to the side, hair splashed with streaks of purple and green. A stab at expressing conflicting emotions, emulating Picasso or one of the abstract artists Mr. Belknap insisted she study. A belated birthday gift for Terri, grabbed last minute from her room upstairs.

Terri stared at it. “A different style for you.” Her face and voice were expressionless. Did she like it? Hate it?

Raven grabbed the portrait back, a burn rising in her chest. What did Terri know about art anyway?

“Where were you last night?” Terri asked softly.

Raven froze. “With kids from school.”

“What kids?”

“No one you know … just kids.”

Terri’s eyes slipped down, back into work.

If only Raven could dispel the silence, expel disappointment, cry. But what good would it do?

Suddenly Terri held up a reproduction tin clown hat. “Made it myself—pretty good, huh?”

Raven watched her apply tiny dabs of scarlet paint, unable to look away, drawn by something she’d never noticed—the faintest hint of a smile moving across Terri’s lips. She knew that smile.

“Do you like your work?” she asked without thinking—a question almost too intimate.

Terri glanced up, considering it. “I do … very much.”

How had Raven missed it? Terri was an artist too, bringing old creations to new life. But she was more. Somehow, somewhere Terri had found the firm ground of her artistic path, creative expression she loved. Just as Raven struggled to do now. Terri’s smile was one Raven hoped to wear.

“I like your hair,” Terri said. The lines in her face softened momentarily. Had Raven missed this too—softness still there?

If only she could give voice to their fledgling connection and offer it to Terri, this unfamiliar kinship, shared devotion to color, texture and shape. What emerged, though, was little more than a murmur: “I have to go.”

Terri nodded and bent over her work again. But when Raven glanced back, Terri was gazing at her with the same small smile she’d worn moments before.

###

George stared at the overgrown hedge in front of his house, clippers in hand. This was Gretchen’s love. He never remembered what type of bushes they were, but Gretchen had tended them as lovingly as a child or puppy. Under George’s care, though, the hedge had grown less delightful, leaves not as vibrant, tangled branches, dead stems.

George sighed. How did he end up here anyway, alone at thirty-eight? Owner of an anemic hedge in front of his nondescript ranch house on the outskirts of a nondescript town only two towns away from the nondescript one he grew up in. Almost too much disappointment to hold in one brain for long. Like juggling a hot potato without potholders, back and forth, hand to hand, unable to grasp it in either one for more than a second. The disappointing reality of his life careened back and forth in his mind the same way, never settling long enough for examination, forever darting behind fantasies of something better.

George chuckled, nearly a cackle, and suddenly felt himself unraveling from the scene, a distant observer, a seer. My god, in the right hands, this moment could be artistic gold. Think Hopper or Munch—capturing the strange emotional undercurrents beneath the ordinary world, the lonely disconnection of modern life. A flame ignited inside George, barely a flicker but his first spark in years.

Why couldn’t he depict this scene himself? Follow his own advice to students: Follow the masters. He’d paint the banality before him—his beige-yellow aluminum-sided ranch house set with four others on identical mini-lots. His the only one with a hedge. Above—angry orange-purple clouds scudding in the waning daylight, threatening rain, end-of-day melancholy wrapped like a meager blanket around his shoulders. George would paint it all, infused with his own dark take on the human condition. An ordinary life, a common predicament, composed in such a way to reveal what’s not normally seen, to unnerve and rouse.

Later, George crept in the dark to his studio. He laid out a clean canvas and sketched the five houses, the clouds, him with his sad shrubs. He mixed beige-yellow paint, working until dawn, lost in joyful toil, recreating the weirdness behind his humdrum existence, the vexing smallness of his world, the insignificance. Nothing he would have imagined for himself in earlier dreams. Nothing. And yet here he was. Painting now to immortalize it, share it with those who might relate, plump it with meaning.

When George headed to bed at dawn, he was pleased beyond measure, smiling to himself. The work was that good—the colors just right, evoking an uneasy sense of isolation, the feeling that his life was absurdly awry. He’d managed to convey it all.

Later, though, when George snuck a peek on his way to work, none of that was true. The painting was nothing like the one he’d composed in the night. The colors weren’t right at all, not even close to the disquieting hues in his head. The houses were childish rectangles with triangle roofs. The clouds weren’t nearly strange enough, not ominous at all, silly, garish swirls of a two-year-old.

“Greatness comes in reworking the details,” his favorite art professor used to say. “Over and over until they’re right. It might take months or even years.”

George stared at his handiwork and almost screamed. How could he endure such slow, grinding labor that might never come to fruition? He needed a sign of progress now. A small hint of greatness to come that might tide him over, a perfect pop of color on a leaf or some flawless glint of dying light reflected on his clippers. Something to propel him through the innumerable ups and downs, zigzags and setbacks of artistic expression. If he could find just one right thing, he could surely manage more. That knowledge would carry him forward, one right thing at a time, step by step. But there was not one glimmer of greatness.

George drove to school barely seeing the road or passing cars, lost inside his racing thoughts. Painting simply required too much concentration and exertion. Mostly dead ends and despondency, too few moments of perfection, not reward enough to sustain him. What a fool to try again.

###

Raven sank to a hard bench near the high school recreation field. It was nearly dark. She pleaded for quick sleep to bypass the heaviness and desolation that always preceded her membrane tearing open. But it was too late. Her guts rumbled, and Raven steadied herself, ready to reach in this time for clues—something to explain Terri’s detachment and their confusing encounter that afternoon, a playbook to coax art from her soul, not regurgitate it from the souls of others. She couldn’t avoid a closer look forever. But her will refused to budge, and she quickly sealed her membrane shut, as always, halting the flood of innards. Unexplored for yet another night.

Later Raven woke in blackness. It was cool and she had no cover. Her left hip ached from lying too long on that side. Tightness pressed on her heart, constricting the flow of everything—blood, energy, love. She saw it then—her membrane hadn’t completely closed. Panic rattled inside as she squeezed and squeezed. But something demanded to be seen, beckoning through a fissure that refused to close, across the quagmire inside, colorful and tempting but not yet real. Like viewing her ideal life from the other side of a black swamp, vast and nearly impossible to traverse. A different Terri stood there, one Raven had briefly glimpsed earlier, and an easy flowing creativity. Love. A mirage she was afraid to believe could truly be.

A sound startled Raven and she shot up, straining to make out a figure by the school. He glanced from side to side, thin and tall, on alert, standing before a Stop sign, paintbrush in hand. One final brushstroke and he disappeared into the dark. But not before Raven saw his face: Raj Bhashyam. The skinny boy from Mr. Belknap’s class, so quiet. He was the sign painter?

Raven couldn’t move, stunned. Of course. She’d long admired his work—its riskiness and depth. Even today she’d peeked at his newest painting—a dove lying dead on its back, a sprawling city, jammed highways and nuclear reactor sprouting from its belly like fungi on a decomposing log. Grim and heartbreaking, except for the tiny luminous ghost dove soaring upward in a patch of brilliant blue sky. Not a favorite childhood memory, as Mr. Belknap had assigned, not blackbirds baked in a pie, but a warning and invitation—life’s ugliness but also the possibility of beauty.

Raven moved toward the sign, membrane still unsealed. “Stop (and Be).” In the lower right corner a silhouette figure stood reflected in the pupil of an eye, arms raised to the sky and fingers feathered out like bird wings. Raven couldn’t pull her eyes away. Stop and be what?

Who you are, Raj whispered. Be brave and bold. Be your best. Fill in the blank. Be _____.

His words were magic, words he wasn’t there to say. Yet they filled Raven with unfathomable joy, like she was falling but so lightly she floated upward instead. A kind of beauty poked at places no one had ever reached, places Terri had yet to touch, or Mr. Belknap, or Raven herself, churning the sludge inside like a great ocean storm, eroding her defenses. Raj understood.

“I wish I knew who I was,” she whispered.

You will. I’m certain.

Raven stared at Raj’s angular face. It wasn’t real. And yet his shining eyes burned so intensely they lit the darkness, black and animal-like but kind, a ferocious beauty that finally made her look away. She’d seen him a hundred times at school, but never like this, fearless eyes laying bare the tenderest bowers of his soul.

“Sometimes I rip open,” she said. “It’s harder to put myself back together.”

You can’t be restored to your original form like your mother’s toys and hope to grow, he said, pulling her close, so close she felt his breath on her cheek, warm with a hint of sweetness and spice, tamarind perhaps, or jasmine. You must slash yourself to pieces, fix what keeps you from working right and fit yourself together in a better way. Not the same old way.

“I’m afraid,” she cried softly.

It’s the hardest thing there is. But that’s where your art lies.

A current of thrilling energy surged through Raven and made her laugh out loud.

####

Up in the art room George lingered long after school. From the window he noticed someone lurking below near a Stop sign holding a paintbrush—the same figure Raven saw. My god. It was that boy from class, Raj Bha-something.

George stared, unable to make sense of the scene. A Dali dreamscape. But even weirder and more disjointed. This boy who rarely spoke, barely took up space in anyone’s awareness—he was the graffiti artist? It couldn’t be.

The incongruence nearly sank George to the floor. Certainly the boy’s artwork was different, George would grant him that, but in a coarse, raw, and undisciplined way. He didn’t listen in class. Painted what he wanted, not what the lesson dictated. Attributable perhaps to language differences, semantic barriers to precise interpretation of instructions. For this reason George had mostly ignored Raj, never entertaining his work as serious, even with its show of promise. Why spin wheels around someone so culturally disadvantaged? An immigrant without likely means or inclination to pursue art. Raj was no renegade or brilliant disrupter—such expression was surely a luxury beyond his reach. At least that’s how George always saw it. But had his keen eye somehow dropped the ball in this instance? George Belknap, discoverer of fine talent, an artistic kingmaker—had he underestimated Raj?

Later in bed, George leafed through his favorite van Gogh picture book, admiring the colors and strong brushstrokes, whimsical clouds, starry nights, irises, sunflowers, potato eaters, a lonely bedroom, empty chairs. A master, once underestimated himself.

So Raj had slipped through George’s sights. So what? The omission could be rectified. Raj was young and undeveloped, not familiar yet with the fullness of art in all its forms over countless centuries. The boy had a penchant for bold expression—that was obvious now. A fine start. But he hadn’t yet paid proper homage to the gifted revolutionaries before him. With guidance he might be shown the way. It was, in fact, a perfect time to begin shaping him.

####

Raven headed back to town alone in the dark as George left the building for home. Toward the end of Turner Street she came upon an altered “Construction Ahead” sign: “(De)-Construction Ahead.” At the bottom, an eye watched her—a gorgeous feral eye, black and shining. His eye. How could Raj have known? Raven only imagined him. And yet there he was with a message just for her, invisibly orchestrated to reach her now.

Her membrane burst wide open, exposing nerve ends, alive and electric. Debris poured from the crater of Raven’s being and splattered across the night. No way to dam it up again. Nothing to do but bleed out and let it dry on the ground for full examination. Time to be more than nothing.

Raven would summon truth from the rubble. She’d seek Raj’s counsel for real, if he’d agree. Veer from Mr. Belknap. Move toward Terri through an entrance briefly glimpsed.

Raven’s new self would take time, a lifetime perhaps, reassembled with useful remnants gleaned from her wreckage, letting the rest melt away.

END

Sidney Stevens received an MA in journalism from the University of Michigan. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Oyster River Pages, TINGE, The Woven Tale Press, and Another Name for Darkness, an anthology from Sans. PRESS. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Newsweek, The Dillydoun Review, and the anthology Nature’s Healing Spirit. See www.sidney-stevens.com.Twitter: @SidneyBStevens1 Instagram: @sidneybstevens