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Deliverance

Nine Months at Philly Parks and Rec: #1

 

They hand me forgotten dice

each a different shade of white —

a plastic snake who’s tail has been ripped off.

Can we glue it back together? they ask.

No, we have to bury it, I say.

Their toy from home with instructions

that no one else is to touch it but me.

Miss Holiday, look, they say.

 

Look

at this piece of paper —

a drawing of a broken heart.

It’s mine – earlier I stole her nose and

have yet to give it back.

Then another drawing of a whole heart after

I asked if she wanted my heart in pieces.

Look, Miss Holiday, they say.

 

Look at

my Lego spaceship,

what I can do on one leg,

at this bug, is it dead? Look

at how this hurts me!

 

I too still walk with cupped palms

outstretched, in search of a recipient

of my own salvaged shards.

I understand a plea

for deliverance.

 

And so when they offer, ask,

lay siege,

I accept.

Holiday Noel Campanella is a multi-disciplinary writer and artist from South Philadelphia. Her work has been published in numerous lit mags and journals, (Gigantic Sequins, San Pedro River Review, Pink Disco, Meow Meow Pow Pow) exhibited and sold nationally, (The Smithsonian Museum, Anthropologie, The Clay Studio) and collected in public and private collections (The Free Library of Philadelphia, Vanderbilt Libraries Special Collections). She has a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in painting and creative writing. You can find out more at holidaynoelcampanella.com.

 

Last

I did the work your nervous fingers

were afraid to do

 

I pulled the razor gently

over the turns in your face –

 

a landscape I have traced since birth –

I fill a wooden cigar box full of lasts

 

last laugh, last drive with you drumming the dash

last song deejayed in the kitchen with the broken cabinets

 

your skin – once baby soft – now covered

in blonde stubble, smothered in shaving cream

 

I pulled the razor down over the jawbone – widening

as the years stretched you towards manhood

 

last dirty sock strewn in the front hall, last homework assignment not yet done

last voicemail, last text

 

I pulled the razor down your trembling neck

Adam’s apple rising – not sure if it could trust me

 

last sticky bag of Swedish fish tossed just shy of your trash can

the last thing I said

 

I finished with the thin space

above your top lip

 

a space so intimately yours

I wondered even then

 

if this would be the last time

I touch you

Colleen Ovelman is an editor and poet, originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania, now living in Vermont. While much of her work and publications are focused on evidence-based medicine, her creative work has previously appeared in the Best of the Burlington Writer’s Workshop, the Grand Exit podcast, and in Vermont Stage’s Winter Tales. She is currently working on a collection of poems, a history of mending, which explores living with grief in the aftermath of her teenage son’s death.

 

Going Places

My daughter needed an apostle.

At least, I think that’s what she said. She was twenty-one at the time; things got lost in translation.

“Ama, an apostle. You don’t know what that is?”

I could hear the edge of impatience in her voice, and also, the beginning of a Very Big Ask: Would I be willing to drive from Philadelphia to Harrisburg with a notarized copy of her FBI criminal background check so it could get a special stamp—the apostle—from the State Department and become part of her visa application to study abroad in Chile?

I said yes.

That’s how I found myself, on a brisk morning the Friday before Christmas in the midst of a pandemic, face-to-masked-face with a Pennsylvania State Department bureaucrat who first corrected my pronunciation—it’s not an apostle, it’s an apostille—then said she couldn’t help me.

Apparently my daughter had used some kind of online service—NotariesRUs.com, perhaps?—but the document needed to bear the signature of a Pennsylvania notary.

I found one in a UPS office not far from the State Department. But that notary said she couldn’t sign the document unless my daughter was physically present. I explained that my daughter was physically present in New York, where she was taking classes and working nights in a restaurant and counting the days until she could leave for Santiago, days that were diminishing by the second.

No go.

Back at the State Department, as I explained to the same bureaucrat what had happened at the UPS office, I became so exasperated that I started to cry.

“No tears!” the woman scolded. “Tears do not help the situation.” Then she slipped me a business card, face down. “Go there, and she will take care of you.” She said it sotto voce, as if we were suddenly in a spy movie.

I turned the card over, half expecting it to say, “Haha, just kidding!” But the card bore the name of a notary along with a Harrisburg address. I drove there. The notary office turned out to be housed in the hemisphere’s most forlorn shopping mall. The whole place smelled like stale Cinnabons, and half the storefronts were empty.

I passed one that had been completely gutted—no merchandise, not even shelving—except for a single chair set halfway back in the space and, on it, a guy in a Santa suit.

For a second, I thought about going in and telling him my wish, but asking for an apostille seemed a little highbrow for this mall, and if I went in, sat on his lap, and said that what I really wanted for Christmas was a freaking apostle, Santa might get the wrong idea.

So I just waved as I passed by.

Finding the notary office required squinting at the business card, nabbing two strangers for help—one had no idea and the other pointed me toward the exit—and finally leaving the mall to bear right toward a drab little arm of storefronts. Empty. Empty. Shuttered. Lit. I entered a space that very recently—say, the week before?—might have been a nail salon: sinuous counter up front and a trio of black swivel chairs, walls hung with photos of soft-focus sunrises and the sort of saccharine posters—“If you love something, let it go”—typically advertised in airplane seat-back catalogs.

I wish I could explain exactly what transpired there. I think the notary asked me to sign something swearing the FBI was correct in ascertaining that my daughter did not have a criminal record. Then she notarized the document and handed it back.

In the mall’s vast, wind-whipped lot, a green pickup had parked next to me. The driver stepped out: earlobe plugs and beefy arms in a T-shirt reading, “Make hardcore thug again.” I had no clue how to translate that into language I understood, but the vibe was evident.

What was I doing here, a hundred miles from home, in the parking lot of a mall long past its prime, December stinging my ears, staring down a stranger who, I was grateful, could not see the Kamala Harris face mask I’d stuffed in my pocket just in case, clutching a document signed by someone who might or might not be an actual notary, a document that would or would not get my daughter one step closer to her study-abroad dream in Santiago?

My daughter. That’s what I was doing here. Because parenthood thickens your love with grit: the same fierce determination that sent me on a neighborhood grid search after her red bicycle festooned with American Girl stickers was stolen from—of all places!—the rack outside our local food co-op. The same tenacity that drove me to sit for hours on a freezing sidewalk in front of a Broadway theater in the hope of snagging two $25 lottery tickets so my daughter could experience the magic of Pippin.

For all I knew, the pickup owner with the earlobe plugs had a child he hugged each night with those no-joke biceps. I took a leap. “Is there a place to get a sandwich around here?” Even hardcore thugs need to eat.

I followed his directions to a corner diner—counter stools, stainless-steel milkshake machine, actual cash register—where I ordered the only edible menu item for a lactose-intolerant pescatarian, a tuna sandwich on white bread, which cost less than a Starbucks latte and came with a ruffle of iceberg lettuce, a pale wheel of tomato, and a little pile of ridged potato chips. I sat at the counter and gobbled every crumb.

My third trip to the State Department felt a little anticlimactic. I gave the papers to my new pal and sat on a stiff wooden chair to wait. Five minutes later, she called my name and returned the packet, with the apostille, which turned out to be a round gold sticker like something your third-grade teacher would put on a perfect spelling test.

“That’s great,” I thought. “But where’s my award?” Not for spending the entire day in Harrisburg chasing an apostille, but for the two decades of parenting that preceded it.

Where’s my prize for changing three thousand diapers (not exaggerating; I did the math). Or my gold star for the day—I think my daughter was nine—when I kept my voice so neutral as I said, “Hey, sweetie, are the dollhouse people having sex on the pink rug in your closet?”

Or what about a blue ribbon for every time I asked, “Would you like a bagel?” and she said, “I hate bagels! Bagels are disgusting!” and I knew that meant, “My blood sugar is so low right now that I’m not even human.”

I used to joke that moments like that were all part of the Ama contract, clause #17a.

Before I left Harrisburg, I called my daughter. I told her about the apostille, but also about the Tough Love Bureaucrat and the Lonely Santa, and she got hysterical, and then I got hysterical, and it was the kind of hysteria where you can’t tell if the wet hiccups are from laughing or crying.

And I realized: This is my award. Because I got lucky. After the diapers and the dollhouse, I got a kid—okay, an almost-adult—who, according to the FBI, is not a criminal, but who is smart and funny and kind and brave, and who is going places I have never been.

And my job—bold print in the Ama contract—is to help her get there.

Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, storyteller and teaching artist. Her book, Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family—a compilation of personal essays and nine years’ worth of her “Parent Trip” columns from the Philadelphia Inquirer—is due out in February 2026 from Temple University Press. Anndee is also the author of Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press). Her work appears regularly in Broad Street Review, the Chestnut Hill Local and Moravian University magazine. She is also a ten-time Moth Story Slam winner. For more than 30 years, Anndee has helped writers across the age spectrum lift their voices in poetry, memoir and storytelling. She lives in West Mt. Airy.

 

Bra Shopping at Wanamaker’s with My Grandmother

I am in the dressing room of Wanamaker’s in downtown Philadelphia as my grandmother tries on bras. Her back is to me and all I can see reflected in the mirror, softened by just-bright-enough sconces is the top of her head, a crown of soft gray curls, bent over a pile of lingerie spread across the bench, price tags dangling. This is 1970: city department stores are grand, fitting room lights are flattering, and primly dressed sales ladies in stockings and low heels assist patrons. My grandmother stands erect to adjust her clothing, and a piece of sculpted foam rubber drops to the floor. She lets out a little cry as though mild pain has shot through her and tries to retrieve the falsie, but the thing bounces under the dressing room curtain and into the hall.

“Gram, what is that?” My innocence is appalling.

Her mouth opens and closes without response. She turns and her blouse falls open just as an especially chipper salesclerk draws back the curtain to see if we need help. In that moment mortification sweeps across my grandmother’s face as the woman and I look at the concave spot where a breast had once been. The skin covering the emptiness sags. Around the edge is a pink sickle-shaped scar with a puckered edge, like the serrations of a grapefruit knife I once saw in her kitchen drawer.

“Oh, oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman stammers and backs away, fumbling with the curtain, nearly stepping on my grandmother’s cheap prosthetic. She gives a little flustered wave. Her eyeglasses, hanging from a chain around her neck, bounce up and down. I pick up the breast. My grandmother sinks to the seat, not even bothering to push the undergarments aside. She covers her face with her hands.

“Didn’t your mother tell you?”

I stand there holding the spongy mound. Tears bead on my bottom lashes.

“I have—” She doesn’t finish her sentence for a moment. I can’t imagine what my mother hasn’t told me.

“I have cancer,” she says into her palms, still covering her face. “They had to cut my breast off because I have cancer.”

She seems ashamed, as though she had done something wrong.

My lip trembles and I feel a little woozy. She struggles to put her bra back on but I am afraid to help. I am twelve years old and more than anything I want a bra. I do not, by anyone’s measurement, need one. But every other girl in my seventh-grade class, it seems to me, is sporting them. The bands with hooks and eyes, like badges across their backs, are just visible enough through their white blouse, now that we no longer have to wear the jumper tops, a requirement through the end of sixth grade in our Catholic grammar school. The front of the blouse bears the school’s insignia on the left breast pocket, flattening and obscuring what little bit lurks behind. The chest of any girl who had a bit of a bosom looks a little lopsided.

I want to join those bra-boasting ranks, but this shopping trip is not about me. No one—not my mother as she pressed the bus fare into my hand that morning, nor my grandmother whose suitcase-sized pocketbook I am guarding—gave a glancing thought to my wanting that coveted piece of underwear. But I fantasized about the silky, lacy, womanly apparel as I surreptitiously let my left hand rifle the whispery displays as I walked through the store.

As Gram stands and wipes her eyes, all I can think of is how I no longer want breasts, much less a bra to cover them, primp them, prop them, or boost them. Having the wrong boy touch them now seems to be the least of the problems to potentially beset them.

My grandmother tucks her foam rubber right breast back into her old white bra. Elastic tendrils poke through the worn straps. She buttons her blouse and marches us from the fitting room, through the store, and out the door onto Market Street to catch the bus.

Fifteen years after that eye-opening shopping trip, my mother will die of breast cancer. It turns out to be a different kind of breast cancer from the type suffered by her mother. It seems her mother was the lucky one, and my grandmother would express feeling somewhat lucky in the course of her illness, often telling people, “My doctors say if they could bottle whatever keeps me alive for all these years with cancer, they’d be millionaires!” What kept her alive was sheer will, definitely not something big pharma could package. It served her well for almost twenty-five years after her diagnosis.

There would be no pill, no therapy, no bottle of elixir to save her daughter, my mother, whose breasts blazed with a fast-moving monster of the mammary glands called inflammatory breast cancer. Diagnosed at forty-eight, she was dead by fifty-three, with the last of her ten children still in grade school. She, like her mother, had an abundance of sheer will, but before that will could be married to cutting-edge cures, the disease prevailed, leaving my five sisters and me to see the one dozen boobs among us as ticking time bombs.

One of my most poignant, painful memories is of an exchange I had with my mother about her breasts when I was thirteen. I found a letter she had written to my father when he was overseas with the navy. My parents had eloped at age nineteen, and my father was away in the service when my mother delivered their first baby that same year. I don’t remember how I got my hands on the letter. Perhaps she was looking through her box of mementos and the flimsy piece of paper, softened by time, bearing her elegant Palmer penmanship, slipped away from her other personal effects. I found it on the laundry room floor. Makes sense to me now, as the laundry room was probably the only place, other than the bathroom, where she ever spent time alone.

Always insatiably curious, I pored over the letter, in which she told my father she is breastfeeding and her breasts are swollen and tender. I brought the letter to her, expecting a conversation of some kind. My mother absorbed the contents with a quick sweep of her eyes across the page and then slapped me. She was all at once angry, hurt, and embarrassed. As was I, in equal measure. To this day, I’m not sure what code of conduct I breached.

Now I am sixty-seven and past the tussle over body image and self-esteem. I see that women’s breasts have always been a kind of iconography. They are the one body part that might bring unbidden leers and suggestive wisecracks one day, a lover’s near-reverence or the singular intimacy of a nursing infant the next. For some, breasts are a nuisance that intrude on athletic efforts; for others they become a weapon of manipulation.

 

Breasts are expensive to dress, cheap to vaunt, a source of worry and often of regret. Legend has it that the Amazon women bound or even amputated their right breasts so as not impede their shot with spear or arrow. That legend is probably apocryphal, but today’s truth is that many women remove or reduce their breasts for complicated reasons, not all of them medical. On the other hand, there are women who augment their breasts or lament their flat chests and feel that they’ve been denied a dimension of sexiness that should have been their birthright.

Of course, I couldn’t have understood all that in the Wanamaker’s dressing room with my grandmother that day. As she snapped on her gloves, angled her pocketbook into the crook of her arm, and led me to the bus back to the suburbs, I was mostly feeling shortchanged that we would not be having lunch in the Crystal Tea Room or —even better— at the Horn & Hardart automat on Chestnut Street, special trip-to-Philly traditions. Instead, we rode home in silence staring out the dusty windows.

Donna Kennedy Maccherone is the founder of Zen Wise Writers, a growing community of writers and thinkers based in Moorestown, NJ, where she hosts workshops. Her work has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tiferet Journal, Collateral, ParentCo, Kaatskill Life, Paterson Literary Review, East By Northeast Literary Magazine, BrainChild, Persimmon Tree, and The Weight of Motherhood, a Moonstone Arts anthology. You can read one of her recent poems here: www.zenwisewriters.com.

 

Spider Walking

I’ve heard that this is something that a lot of girls go through, but then they grow out of it. Once the teenage hormones settle down, the irresistible urge to climb the walls fades. Spiderwalking is forgotten when the demands of adult life drag us—perhaps unwillingly—from our ceilings. Only women who are especially disturbed or attention-seeking carry on this way after high school. Certainly, after college, they’ll be done with it. But I’ll be 30 soon, and I still spiderwalk most every night.

I lie awake in bed past midnight—I don’t want to check the time and learn how long I’ve failed to fall asleep—thinking about all the emails that are probably in my inbox right now. Surely there is spam. Discounts on liposuction treatments. Payday loans. I bet there are updates from the magazine that I paid to subscribe to, but never actually find the time to read. There’s probably an email from my boss. Exciting new client! She’s always calling things exciting, as if we work at a theme park rather than a moderately successful marketing firm. I wonder if my mom will send me a virtual birthday card this year.

I’m not going to manage to sleep like this. Maybe a short spiderwalk is just the thing I need. It doesn’t really hurt anything.

I shake off the dull gray blankets and stand. The cold of the scratched hardwood floors immediately bleeds into my bare feet. I stand in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. I reach up my left hand, the bristly little hairs on my fingertips clinging to the imperfections in the seemingly flat surface. My right hand goes up. Then one foot. Then the other. I climb above the window and tap the flimsy curtain rod with one toe. Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.” I smile to myself.

Nearly two years ago now—has it really been two years?—I was dating a man with wavy hair and an easy smile. I think he loved me. He always remembered our anniversary, and sometimes he bought me flowers just because. But he couldn’t stand the spiderwalking. My skittering would wake him in the middle of the night, and he would cry out please, come down from there!

But I couldn’t. Even his love wasn’t enough to keep both my feet on the ground. When he got his PhD, I missed his commencement ceremony; I was busy climbing from room to room. He eventually told me that he couldn’t stand by while I sabotaged myself. I watched him pack his bags from where I crouched next to the dusty ceiling fan. He took the TV with him and all the bathroom towels, which seemed more spiteful than anything else.

I like the way my hair hangs above my head when I’m on the ceiling. Dirty blonde. I always thought it was a mean descriptor, but it’s the best term for the locks that race and trip over each other towards the floor. I stand up straight—upside down—to see if my hair will actually brush the floor. Not quite, but it’s tantalizingly close. A couple more inches. I am a spiderwalking Rapunzel.

I climb across the room, over the lintel, and into the hall. I don’t need the lights on to know what it looks like. It’s the same landlord white as the day I moved in. I never hung any pictures.

In the cluttered living room, I look down at the furniture that the wavy-haired man helped me pick out years ago. From the ground in the light of day, the couch looks a little shabby and stained. From the ceiling at night, it looks plush and comforting, like if I dropped down I’d sink in and never have to leave. I remember the way the wavy-haired man used to collapse into it, smile on his face—as if smiling was the simplest thing in the world—with one arm outstretched for me to nestle into. The version of me that had obliged, resting my head on his shoulder, feels very far away.

In the corner, just above where the TV used to be, one of my kin is building her web. I creep closer on careful hands and feet. The way her little, black body moves, each step planned, is mesmerizing. Eight limbs working in perfect unison. How simple it would be to be a true spider. To spend my days only concerned with maintaining a web in the corner of a house that someone else pays for. When I was younger, I often hoped that I would gain the ability to spin webs. But I couldn’t even figure out how to knit.

Watching spiders makes my chest ache. I leave her behind and scurry into the dining room. My fingers are cramping from gripping the ceiling so firmly. I squat, feet clinging to the ceiling, so that I can massage my hands, one in the other.

On the table, in the spot where I eat dinner most nights, is a stack of mail. On top of the pile is a save-the-date for my cousin’s wedding. Twenty-one is too young to get married. What do they know about anything? But I met her fiancé at a family function a while ago—I can’t remember when—and she seemed like a perfectly nice girl. They held hands all night and giggled to each other in that private way that people do when they’re in love. I wonder if either of them spiderwalks.

The save-the-date is dominated by a picture of the two of them in summer dresses on a beach somewhere, their hands tangled together. From where I’m perched, they’re the ones who are upside down. Their feet are stuck in the sand above. The ocean and the wide, blue sky stretch below their heads forever. A whole world upside down. I laugh at the thought.

The blood is rushing to my head, but that’s good. It makes everything weird and warped. The man with the wavy hair didn’t like  when this would happen. He would say Your face is turning beet red, with evident disapproval. Beet red. What a strange expression. Of all the red things in the world to compare me to! I wonder if my face really is as red as a beet. That would be interesting at least. Maybe later I’ll climb into the bathroom and check the mirror.

The clock on the oven reads 00:E. It’s three in the morning, but I don’t feel tired. This is the most awake I’ve felt all day. I wonder if I could dance on the ceiling? Maybe then my childhood tap classes would pay off. Although I don’t know that the upstairs neighbors would be thrilled. But while I may be reckless, I don’t actually want to fall from up here. A brain injury would in no way improve my life, so I stay on hands and knees.

The thing is that I’m fine. My life is perfectly fine. I got a good job right out of college. I talk to my parents every week. I’m in a book club! My mom was more upset than me that I let a doctor become the one who got away. It’s fine.

I scurry back to my bedroom, climb down the wall, and drop back into bed. The blood that has pooled in my head is rushing back to the rest of my body. I am an hourglass whose top is quickly draining. The blankets have grown cold from the lack of my body heat. I nestle back in. Perhaps tomorrow, I won’t feel the need to spiderwalk. Maybe I’ll wake up better than fine. I’ll enjoy a weekend lay-in and then I’ll go grocery shopping. I’ll meet for book club (though I’ll have to hurry and finish the book first). I’ll call my mom. Maybe I should call my cousin as well to congratulate her on her engagement. I’ll meal prep for the week, and it will make me feel accomplished and mature. It’ll be great.

Sure. Tomorrow.

Emilee Mae received an MA in Writing from Rowan University in May 2025. She writes primarily for middle grade readers, but she also enjoys writing more mature short fiction and personal essays. In her free time, she likes to read, crochet, and garden. She lives in South Jersey with her little brothers and her even littler cats.

 

Saints of the Divine Lorraine Hotel

The Divine Lorraine stood at the intersection of Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue like a cathedral and a beacon, its gilded lettering lit day and night. Lottie Franklin arrived at its doors just past dusk, carrying a carpetbag with fraying corners and the address scrawled on a paper she kept folded like scripture in her brassiere.

A man in white held the door open. “Peace,” he said, and his voice was soft, as though greeting her into a dream.

She stepped into the lobby and blinked hard. The floor shone like sugar glass. Overhead, a chandelier hung heavy with light, and the air smelled of starch and lemons. There were no bellboys. No desk clerks. Just two women in pressed uniforms setting a flower arrangement beside a sign that read: All Are Welcome. No Smoking. No Drinking. No Cursing. No Segregation.

Lottie smoothed the lapel of her jacket, a borrowed houndstooth with the lining coming loose, and approached the table. “I’m here for work,” she said. “A Sister Essie told me to come.”

The woman arranging lilies, sharp-featured with cheekbones like mountain ridges, smiled but did not look up. “You’re already home, dear.” She passed Lottie a clipboard. “You’ll start in the kitchen, if that suits you. Father Divine believes labor is the highest form of love.”

Lottie signed the form with a hand that trembled slightly. “I been in kitchens my whole life. This one can’t be no worse.”

That made the other woman laugh—a rich, melodic sound that echoed like bells. “Honey, this is Heaven. We don’t do worse here.”

***

She settled in quickly. The Divine Lorraine was not a hotel in the way she’d imagined. No maids. No tips. No hierarchy. It was a commune of equals.

At 6 a.m., Lottie scrubbed potatoes in the basement kitchen, shoulder to shoulder with men who used to be porters and seamstresses who now called themselves Saints. At noon, they sang hymns over vegetarian stews thick with barley. At 8 p.m., they gathered in the meeting room to hear Father Divine speak through the phonograph or sometimes, by miracle, in person.

By the third day, she’d stopped waking with the heaviness in her chest. By the fifth, she’d stopped thinking about Elmer, her husband, back in South Carolina, and how he’d once thrown a chair at her for reading the Bible too loud.

The sixth day, she met Henry. He was tall but narrow, like a book left open on a table. His suit was pressed but slightly dated, and he had the bearing of someone used to being watched. Lottie found him in the kitchen doorway, his cap in his hands, looking over the lunch table as though searching for the answer to a question he didn’t know how to ask.

“You looking for someone?” she said.

He blinked. “No. Just curious.”

“About what?”

“This whole… operation.” He gestured to the rows of tables, the steaming plates, the silence and order of it all. “I got back from the war last week. Was told this place feeds anyone. Black or white. No money down.”

“That’s true.”

“Then what’s the catch?”

She looked him over. His hands were clean but calloused, his knuckles like broken pebbles. He had the thin layer of weariness she recognized in men who had been hungry, but not starved. Lost, but not entirely beyond return.

“There ain’t no catch,” she said. “Just don’t bring any liquor or hate through that door, and you’ll be fine.”

He nodded slowly, as though memorizing each word. Then he said, “Name’s Henry.”

“Lottie.”

He didn’t smile, but his shoulders dropped an inch. “Well, Lottie, if it’s all right, I’ll stay for a while.”

***

In the weeks that followed, Henry became a regular presence. He didn’t pray aloud. He didn’t sing. He wouldn’t wear the white robes others sometimes adopted on holy days. But he was always first to stack chairs after supper, and he took to washing the front steps each morning with quiet diligence.

“I’m not sure I believe in Father Divine,” he said one night, sitting with Lottie on the rooftop where they watched the city glow under a haze of streetlamps.

“You don’t have to,” she replied. “Just don’t speak against him. This place holds fragile things.”

He looked at her then, really looked, and said, “You fragile?”

“No.” She laughed. “I was broken. That’s different.”

He nodded like a man who understood.

***

There was a woman named Sister Geneva who led the prayers at dawn. Her voice climbed octaves like stairs. She’d lost two sons to the Spanish flu and her husband to the bottle, but here she stood each morning, palms outstretched, preaching love as if it were oxygen.

Geneva took a liking to Henry. “You’ve got a worker’s heart,” she told him. “Father Divine says labor is how the soul breathes.”

But Henry, while respectful, didn’t join the movement. He never referred to Father Divine as “God,” the way the others did.

“I think he’s a good man,” Henry told Lottie. “But I’ve seen what happens when folks give too much of themselves to one voice.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But when the voice saves you from drowning, you listen.”

He didn’t argue. Just stared out the window and tapped his fingers against his knee. “I got used to not believing in much,” he said. “But I like it here. Feels like some place a man can rest.”

***

It was the hour before the sun hit the horizon, that gray, sleepy time when nothing feels quite real. The kitchen was still and heavy with the weight of the night’s work. A single bulb hung low above the counter where Lottie stood, the smell of onions and garlic fresh in the air as she sliced vegetables for the day’s meals.

She had just finished cutting a potato when she felt it—the soft touch of a hand on her wrist. She froze.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Henry’s voice was low, ragged, as though the act of speaking took effort.

Lottie didn’t pull away. “You’re here early.”

“I know. Couldn’t stop thinking.”

She nodded, not wanting to press. But she did anyway. “About what?”

Henry was standing behind her now, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body through the fabric of her dress. She felt it like a fire at her back, a warmth that didn’t burn, but enveloped.

“About leaving,” he said, voice steady but with a note of hesitation she hadn’t heard before. “And about staying.”

Lottie set the knife down, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s not a hard choice, is it?”

“I’m not sure anymore.” He sounded almost sad. “I’ve been living a lie my whole life, Lottie. First, I was a soldier—fighting for something I wasn’t sure I believed in. Now I’m here, in this place, and it feels like… peace, yes. But I don’t know if I’m the man who deserves it.”

She turned to face him, surprised at the vulnerability she saw in his face—so different from the hard mask he’d worn when they’d first met. His eyes, wide and unsure, looked at her as if searching for an answer.

“You deserve it,” Lottie said softly. “This place doesn’t ask you to be anything you’re not. Not here, Henry. You’re allowed to rest. You don’t have to carry that weight anymore.”

He reached out, slowly, almost as if afraid of rejection. His hand cupped her cheek, and she leaned into it, feeling the roughness of his palm against her skin. “You know,” he said quietly, “I thought I was just passing through. But I can’t seem to leave. You’re here, too. I think… I think I want to stay for you.”

The words hung in the air between them, a quiet confession, one Lottie wasn’t sure how to answer. But she knew she didn’t want him to leave. Not yet. Not ever.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her voice more certain than she felt.

His fingers slid from her cheek to the back of her neck, pressing gently, like a prayer.

And for that moment, the world outside—the one of uncertainty and violence—ceased to exist. There was only the warm glow of the kitchen light and the two of them, standing there, silently bound by the shared understanding that neither of them had ever truly found home. Not until now.

***

By December, snow clung to the Lorraine’s ledges like whipped icing. A few of the Saints had begun to murmur that Father Divine might come for Christmas, that he would bring Peace himself, and maybe a sermon that would shake the city walls.

Henry asked if he could stay in the Lorraine full-time. He moved into a third-floor room with pale yellow walls and no lock on the door.

He and Lottie began taking meals alone together in the corner of the kitchen. Not in secret—nothing was secret here—but in soft companionship.

“I used to think I needed a man to be worth something,” she said.

“And now?”

“Now I think I need a purpose.”

Henry smiled. “Maybe you found both.”

***

It was snowing again. Soft flakes drifted down, swirling through the cold night air as Lottie stood at the edge of the rooftop, watching the city below. Philadelphia was quieter in winter, as though the world itself was huddled for warmth, waiting for spring.

Henry joined her, his coat unbuttoned against the chill. He didn’t seem to mind the cold, but Lottie could feel the sharpness of it biting through her thin sweater.

“Cold night,” he said, and she looked at him, meeting his eyes in the dim light.

“I don’t mind it.” Her voice was steady, even though inside she felt the weight of the past few days bearing down on her.

Henry leaned on the railing beside her, his profile sharp against the backdrop of the falling snow. He was quiet for a long moment, the kind of silence that pressed against you like a door trying to close. Then he spoke again, his voice barely a whisper.

“Do you ever think about leaving?”

Lottie’s chest tightened. She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She knew he wasn’t asking about the Divine Lorraine. He wasn’t asking about this city. He was asking about her. About them.

“No,” she answered simply. “I think about staying.”

He turned his head to look at her, his gaze searching, as if trying to piece together a puzzle that had no clear answer. “Even when it’s hard? Even when nothing feels sure?”

She took a breath, her fingers tightening on the cold metal of the railing. “Yes. Even then.”

Henry’s expression softened, though a shadow of something darker lingered in his eyes. “I don’t know how to feel sure. I’ve been told my whole life that nothing good comes easy. But here, it’s different. With you.” The words hung there, vulnerable, raw. She wasn’t sure what they meant, but she understood them and understood him.

“I’ve been running my whole life,” he continued, his voice thick with emotion. “From war. From men who told me how to be. From myself. But here, I don’t have to run anymore. I don’t have to be a soldier. I don’t have to pretend.”

Lottie reached out without thinking, her hand gently resting on his arm. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Henry. You never did.”

He was still for a moment, his eyes closing, as though he were allowing himself to feel her words fully. When he opened them again, there was something softer in his gaze—a glimmer of peace she hadn’t seen before.

“I think I’m starting to believe that,” he said quietly. “Starting to believe in this place. And in you.”

Her heart didn’t flutter in her chest, not in the way Henry wanted, not in the way it had with women in the past. “Then stay,” she said, calmly.

He exhaled slowly, as if the weight of his decision had lifted just slightly. “I will. I’m staying.”

And together, they stood there in the falling snow, each silently acknowledging the promise between them.

***

The thing unraveled when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer snuck into the Lorraine and took photographs—blurry shots of the integrated dining room, of white and Black men praying side by side. The next morning, the street outside the hotel filled with policemen and protestors.

Lottie heard one shout, “You’re a fraud, Father Divine! You’re nothing but a preacher with a cult and a cash box!”

The hotel locked its doors for the first time in three years. No guests. No new arrivals. Henry paced like a caged dog. “I fought for this country,” he snapped. “Took shrapnel in the leg for it. And now I’m a ‘cult member’ because I eat in a clean room with clean people?”

“Don’t take it in your chest,” Lottie said. “They hate what they don’t understand. They always have.”

But Henry’s calm was gone. Three days later, he left. Said he needed “air.” Said he’d be back by dinner.

Lottie waited. He didn’t return that night, or the next. On the third day, Sister Geneva came to Lottie with a folded newspaper.

They found his body near the Schuylkill River. Beaten. Wallet gone. Coat torn. The article called him “a transient.” No mention of his service, his work, his gentleness. Lottie closed the paper. She folded it once, twice, and a third time.

***

At the New Year’s meeting, Father Divine spoke in person. His voice was clear and musical, ringing through the ballroom with divine calm.

“We are not measured by what the world calls us,” he said. “We are measured by how we love.”

Lottie sat in the front row, her back straight, her hands in her lap. She wept, but she did not cry out.

Later that night, she walked the hallways, brushing her fingers against the brass handrails, the smooth-painted walls, the framed photos of Father Divine handing out loaves of bread.

In the kitchen, she peeled onions until her hands stung. She scrubbed the stove until her knees ached. She looked up once, as if expecting Henry to lean in through the doorway, cap in hand, asking about lunch. He didn’t. But she remained. Because someone had to. Because someone always must. And when she prayed now, she prayed for him. For Elmer, too. For every man who didn’t know how to come in from the dark.

She prayed, and she peeled, and she sang. Heaven, she thought, had never looked like gold. It looked like this: a clean floor, a hot meal, a room without locks. Peace, in pieces. But still peace.

Justin Taroli is a writer based in New York City. Originally from Pennsylvania, his work often explores small-town life, queerness, and the uncanny edges of the everyday. He is at work on a collection of short stories.

 

Unforgettable (Website Exclusive)

With fresh blooming peonies, I stood at my neighbor’s back door. 

Waiting “patiently” like a dog anticipating a walk

 The sparkling clean pool seemed to gaze back at me. 

The radiant sun danced on the water, hoping I’d come and visit. 

 

My neighbor appeared with a bunch of fun new toys, 

 Floaties, water guns, and a huge bowl of watermelon, 

 The scent of new plastic filled the air. 

 

I jumped in with excitement.

Back then my only concern was how far I could swim

Now, I worry about staying afloat. 

 

Five fantastic summers later, the pool is covered 

The blinds are closed, and fresh fruit no longer summons me to the table.  

I no longer hear “Do you want a Nutella sandwich?” from the edge of the patio. 

 

The flowers in the garden crawl as nature claims the house.   

Beloved treasured belongings now sit dusty in an overfilled box.  

His tales of war have faintly faded from my mind.  

 

A flag of achievement flutters high on the light post along the street.  

“In Honor of a Brave Veteran”  

All he was to them was a soldier, but to me he was spark,  

Encouraging kindness, positivity, and gratitude.  

Kayla Sharp is a 17-year-old high school student, just starting her senior year at Franklin Towne Charter high school. She has loved writing since she was in elementary school, but throughout the past year she has been engaging more often with her passion for writing. She recently attended the Drexel writing conference and is currently in a creative writing class at her school. A majority of Kayla’s writing is based on her experiences in foster care and other events that have happened throughout her life.

 

The Sadness of House Plants (Website Exclusive)

When a plant fades, its owners are dismal. They struggle to thrive from too much or little

 care. The leaves wilt, not reaching their highest potential. 

You whisper to them, in hopes of comforting them into gleam

 

Like when the plant used to smile and bloom 

With graceful flowers, each petal a different hue. 

You forgot to offer care and came back to a withered view.

 

You reassure the plant they’re not forgotten 

You share how you long for old memories

And how things have shifted, changing for the worse.

 

You urge the dirt to accept hydration,

Even though they’ve been parched for so long. 

The skeptical neighbors tell you “It’s too late, the plant has lost its song” 

 

You tell the plant you will dedicate all your time to them

You will fight until your last breath. Words create hope,

Though actions create change. The plant held a grudge

 

Perched on yet another windowsill dreaming of change

 but met with Lack of care.

 Yet your thoughts wondered far away the window,

Frustrated with progress that was rarely seen, 

The plant fought to grow, reaching for light.

With your neglect, it couldn’t stand to fight.

Kayla Sharp is a 17-year-old high school student, just starting her senior year at Franklin Towne Charter high school. She has loved writing since she was in elementary school, but throughout the past year she has been engaging more often with her passion for writing. She recently attended the Drexel writing conference and is currently in a creative writing class at her school. A majority of Kayla’s writing is based on her experiences in foster care and other events that have happened throughout her life.

 

Redeemable (Website Exclusive)

Out of the evil that covered me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole.

I thank he only God 

For the redemption of my soul.

 

By the power of the one who has made me bold

I am strengthened with strength untold.

Although my enemy seeks to make me feel dejected

The attempts are in vain as I am resurrected.

 

Beyond this place of sorrow

Advances the destroyer of tomorrow

Yet the executioner of years

Will find me without tears.

 

It matters not how tough the hate,

How tough the goal.,

Christ is the master of my fate:

Christ is the master of my soul.

Kayden McClain is a 14 year old student that is currently attending Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstrations School, located in Philadelphia, PA.  He has aspirations of becoming a seasoned martial artist.