We are pleased to announce that we’re kicking off the new year with a special section dedicated to creative nonfiction in the Spring issue. While we will still include other fine work, Revolution House is going to dedicate a a wealth of space in the magazine to all things truth. We are open to all forms of creative nonfiction, but we encourage a glance back through our past issues to get a feel for the sort of things we tend to like (note: we like many, many things). Send us your best and brightest by February 20, 2012. We can’t wait to read.
As a bonus, we will be offering a small cash prize to the author of one work of creative nonfiction in this issue. So if you’ve been sitting on something, wondering if you should send it out… the answer is yes. You might just become our first paid contributor.
See you in the submissions manager.*
*Not to fret—work already accepted for this issue will be considered for the editor’s choice prize.
I could never find that fence post again….there must be thousands of fence posts along state road 60 running across the middle of Florida, and at 90 miles an hour they’re really just a blur. But I stared at this one, hard, I can remember everything about it but I have no idea why it was there. Were there cows behind it? Maybe an orange grove? We have to get there on time, we’re not moving nearly fast enough.
His phone rang , he quietly said “thank you” and I stared at a fence post.
He looked straight ahead at the road, squeezing the steering wheel….“your father passed away”
I don’t know why he said it that way….maybe the formality of words like “father” and “passed-away” seemed less harsh and stark. But that’s not what happened……. my father didn’t pass-away….my dad died.
Moms’ voice sounded calm and strong when she called a few minutes later and asked if I was okay. I said that I was, but I really don’t know if I was “ok”, I don’t know what I was, it was such a weird feeling. It wasn’t sad, I don’t know what that feeling was. She sounded so calm. In a way, I guess a felt a little calmer too.
For weeks I didn’t sleep, expecting the phone to ring in the middle of the night….someone calling to tell me he was gone. And when I closed my eyes I could see him shaking in that bed. That weird spastic twitching that made him seem pitiful. A word that I would never associate with that man, and it made my heart hurt. Fucking cancer.
I found myself lying in bed or driving around saying over and over “god please just take away the pain, just don’t let him hurt, if he has to do this, PLEASE just don’t let him hurt”.
That was when I could pray, I can’t pray now, I don’t know why, I want to, I even make plans to, I close my eyes and my mind is completely blank. I’m not angry at god, that’s just stupid….I hate it when people say asinine things like that. I didn’t expect him to live forever and it’s not like I didn’t know he had cancer. He had it for ten freakin’ years….of course I knew he was going to die.
More than anything, I guess I feel guilty.