ERIN CONWAY

In my literacy life I defined the difference between fiction and nonfiction for educational purposes. The table of contents was one element. Another was reading individual chapters by interest not numerical order. Each time I open The Business of Being A Writer I read the table of contents searching for benchmarks in my literary life, headings and page numbers that tell me where I’ve been as well as what might be next. I read Parts One and Two to arrive at Part Three: Book P

This weekend friends and families will be sitting around tables exchanging food and words. Telling stories around tables is a hallmark of Jewish tradition and so is asking questions, a role often played by children. The Passover seder features four such children, one who remains silent because they don’t know what to ask. Sarah Hurwitz reflects on how she, like the fourth child, remained silent, unable to form the questions she needed. Hurwitz compounds this silence with how

Sea and sky. That’s all there was in the beginning as the Popol Vuh was told to me. Sea and sky. I can’t believe I’m here. I almost wasn’t. In so many ways, we almost weren’t. Sera and I walk Dusty’s Trail. We pick around fallen limbs shattered on the road. Bark is peeled away from what resembles broken arms and cracked ribs of a shipwreck. The corn plants dry. They will be harvested soon. I stare along a leaf of blended color. One edge is the shade of my own hair. Next to it