Associate Editor Taylor Byas: I would argue that grief never goes away, but returns in waves, changing its shape each time. Bill King’s “Why I’m Caching a Gallon of Water near the Chimney Top Outlook of North Fork Mountain” succeeds in capturing this phenomenon, the anaphoric and lyric prose a perfect metaphor for grief’s slippery persistence. The emotional tension of this piece builds with each repetition while its steady rhythm keeps the reader afloat. King helps us ride the wave of grief to the shore, where it breaks over us, then retreats before it comes again.
To hear Bill read his essay, click here:
Why I’m Caching a Gallon of Water near the Chimney Top Outlook of North Fork Mountain
Because we drove through the Alleghenies, snow devils swirling in and out of low beams, and down past Petersburg, Manassas, Bull Run, past ranks of gray-blue trunks wrapped in fog. Because we got lost in DC, caught up in L’Enfant’s wheel-and-spoke design, went round and round a roundabout until we learned to read the signs. Because we needed to find, and did, at last, a surgeon named Sugarbaker who pioneered the only procedure worth trying. Because while I sat across from him he enunciated each word into a Dictaphone—the only object on his desk—slowly, slowly, as if teaching a child to read: signet cell; appendiceal; adenocarcinoma. Because it felt like a trap. Because when I looked at my wife in the only other chair in the corner of that fluorescent room, the bees I feed flowers to so they stay housed in my heart started buzzing through each vein. Because my son was only fourteen. Because my daughter wanted to drop out, come home. Because one day when I walked into the chemo room with its pair of recliners, its twin IV poles and a table in between, a man named Bob who—it turned out—liked to hike and read just like me was sitting there. Because he died and I didn’t. Because people said What a blessing from God! when they saw me in the flesh—standing in line at GoMart, planting a pawpaw by the walk, taking the dog around the block. Because I know that’s not it. Because if that was it, Bob and I would have hiked the 25.5-mile length of the North Fork Mountain trail together—a ridgeline so high and rocky in the mountains we both loved there’s no water to speak of. Because neither one of us talked about goodbye. We talked about the stars, what if you lost your map and compass, what does it feel like to step right into the sky.
Bill King (he/him) is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose recent work has appeared in 100 Word Story, Still: The Journal, Appalachian Review, and Heartwood. His chapbook, from Finishing Line Press, is The Letting Go (2018). His first full-length poetry collection, Bloodroot, will be released in 2023 (Mercer University Press).
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