By ELIZA CALLARD

He’s a photojournalist; I am sucking mist
from my nebulizer.  We are on a train from
New York City to home, and he seems an

easy way to spend two hours.  He wants
to know about the fog surrounding us
in our double seat, and I explain about

cystic fibrosis, and the medicines I take
for my lungs.  He asks all the right
questions, even braving “What’s

the outlook?” and I am soothed to be
honest, soothed not to wear
the toothy smile I show my friends.  I can

say that I’m not likely to live long — maybe
thirty years old — and he is a stranger,
and he can care for two hours and then

let me go.  He talks about some children
with leukemia that he met for a newspaper
piece, and then, as if he is asking me

only what book I am holding, slack,
on my lap, “Have you thought about the

afterlife?”  I go still, although a siren
seems to be whining in my head.  I disembark,

gifted with a brochure ominously called,
“Would You Like To Know God Personally?”

and a resolve that my friends could, perhaps,
brave the truth of my life.

Eliza Callard was born, raised, and now lives in Philadelphia with her family. Forty years of managing — and occasionally mismanaging — her cystic fibrosis have given her perspective on loss and endurance. A product of the Philly public schools and Skidmore College, she enjoys family time, hiking and camping, and playing the piano. Her website is elizacallard.com.

Fighting Rooster

By RUTHIE VOTH

Looking back, I think  the first visit, for all of its awkwardness,
was my favorite-
the clearest in my mind.
The one with the watermelon, broken open to splatter on wooden boards
and dogs in constant attendance.
None of your apologies could change the fact that
your speech was more slurred by the hour;
even so, the evening was warm with laughter and conversation.

and there was a chicken on your shoulder
that we all agreed was beautiful
and two lovely  little girls
always hovering just left of center stage.

You asked if I wanted to shoot your gun.
Me, the girl who finds power in ideas and words
and has never searched for thrills to feel alive — me.
Martha Stewart or Emily Post would not have
refused a kind host’s generous offer,
but I
couldn’t see past the meaningless waste.

I worried you’d fall to your death
over the balcony railing
but your wife was not so concerned.
“He’s fallen farther than that. He used to jump out of planes.”
Still, I was only at ease when you were firmly planted in a chair.

for all of his beauty and tameness,
nobody could beat your rooster in a fight
and you’d lay money on that

The empty cans piled on your counter
as the little ones went to bed
and the older ones watched TV,
leaving five of us on a high deck under early summer stars
gathered close by the darkness outside our ring of firelight.

The night was full of our words, jumbling
over and past and into each other
and always circling back to your topic of the night
religion
in various forms. “I’m a druid” you said,
perched on your railing over Troublesome Creek,
“God is everywhere. She’s in that tree, he’s in that rooster.”

I watched you rolling each other’s cigarettes
without being asked-
moves that echoed those of my parents and grandparents
who intentionally modeled a life of loving by serving.

And all of my years of wholesome,
sober
upbringing
left me with little to say except to argue,
“No, there was sex before the fall.
It was a gift
and Adam and Eve enjoyed it.”

It was midnight before
our collided worlds separated
and the rooster from his sleepy stance on the porch railing
watched us drive away
carrying bones for our dogs
and memories to linger like cigarette smoke
long after the initial impact.

Deep in the hills of southeastern Kentucky, Ruthie and her husband raise their four children and run a Bible camp. Sometimes, in the aftershock of the busyness, her mind clears enough to blog and write a little poetry.