From the moth wing diaries

LORI VRBA

I grew up in a little house on a dead-end dirt road with no street sign, buried deep in the tall pines of Southeast Texas. I was a scrappy, out-the-door little girl with wild, uncombed hair, entertaining myself most days by stick-drawing in the dirt or playing house in the woods. I spent more time alone than not and don’t remember wishing for company.

Mom had a chest of drawers in the front hall. On the occasions I found myself sick and tired of the oppressive heat and humidity, I would plop down on the cool linoleum floor and pull out the bottom drawer on the left side and stay there for a long, long time. This drawer is where she kept the photographs. There were decades worth of family history in that drawer, but I knew none of it. My parents left behind hard lives. They never talked about it, and I didn’t grow up knowing extended family. So the photographs were just photographs: intriguing, anonymous faces, mostly in black and white, whispering stories from a piece of time that mattered to someone.