Northern New England Review Volume 42 | 2022
Northern New England Review is published as a creative voice for the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine region. NNER publishes writers and artists who live in, are from, or have connections to Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. If you live here, were once from here, lost or found your heart here, or are currently searching for it among the green hills, sparkling ponds, and rocky coasts, NNER has the poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction you want to read. Northern New England Review is edited and designed by students and faculty at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. Questions can be sent to Margot Douaihy, editor, at douaihym@franklinpierce.edu.
Northern New England Review is published as a creative voice for the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine region. NNER publishes writers and artists who live in, are from, or have connections to Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. If you live here, were once from here, lost or found your heart here, or are currently searching for it among the green hills, sparkling ponds, and rocky coasts, NNER has the poems, short fiction, and creative nonfiction you want to read.
Northern New England Review is edited and designed by students and faculty at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, New Hampshire. Questions can be sent to Margot Douaihy, editor, at douaihym@franklinpierce.edu.
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* * *
While lying in bed, I’m reading a New Yorker article about our
imagined lives: “…one of the most significant facts about us may
finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a
thousand kinds of life but end up in the end having lived only
one.” Close my eyes. My road had been so clear, with off-ramps
into a thousand imaginings. I read on: “While growth realizes, it
narrows. Plural possibilities narrow.”
Words and life converging.
My wife sleeps next to me, but my children sleep in dorm beds
away. And I continue to grow into the beating heart my mother
raised.
For too long, I, too, narrowed her. We each do our part.
I grow, I realize, I narrow—too.
* * *
Commuting home, I call her while stuck in traffic and ask about
her window. She laughs, without words saying she’s touched by my
remembering, by my going to her now and back in time.
“I’d seen that octagonal window somewhere, and I told your
father I wanted it,” she says. “I had to have it. It totally intrigued
me.”
NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND REVIEW | 21
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