Dylan Harbison

I used those old magazines and newspapers to make collages and dioramas. Cut out advertisements of cigarettes and alcohol and drew red circles with lines through their images to get Uncle Johnny to stop smoking and drinking. Handed him get well cards of folded construction paper and dollied hearts to which he’d say fuck off and hand it back. Didn’t seem worth the trouble, I thought, or the six licks mama made me take from the switch for cutting up her book. Now standing in front of my Memaw’s house with Sylvie twisting a thread on the hem of her skirt, I don’t know the girls, victims of a tragic sisterhood. I don’t know their families or their histories, but I imagine their stories. Maybe they’re similar to my own. Once I was asked, “How did you get out?” “Truth be told,” I said, “I don’t know that I ever left.” That could have been me sinking among the sawgrass and sourweeds surrounded by cautionary police tape. I could have been the girl in my rear view mirror, torn in two, wishing that the stranger kept driving or stopped, for any hope of happiness or a shot at redemption.

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