Haibun for Mom and Gramps (1945-2025) 

By Carter Manalla

A dysphoric dream takes you back to the wedding; this familiar scene of white everything seems to torture your closed eyes. There's a pair of statues: one is your husband dressed in his tuxedo and the other isn't you. You assume that the marble woman will be switched out before the mass begins—a lie you know is told just to calm yourself down. Your hair hasn't been flat-ironed, your makeup has not been done, the florist has yet to arrange her bouquets, and your father should be on his way with the wedding dress. There are ten minutes before the ceremony starts. Everything appears to be running late.

Rummaging through your contacts, "Dad" eludes the simple search. Guests begin to arrive; the rows of soon-to-be filled pews blot your soon-to-be veiled forehead with sweat. That all-too-familiar harrowing heat of panic surges through your skin. You don't recognize any of the guests, in fact, you now fail to recognize the venue at all. False relatives like little amber flames spread throughout the waxy benches, lambs melt from their stained-glass portraits, and the Virgin mary cries—a fire so hot, yet you are glazed in an ice-cold sweat.

A September wedding marks Persephone's return to her creed of grief. The weather turns, and so do you. Orange leaves begin to fall like a reminder of all the small things that escape your sturdy hand—tiny embers of violence scattered in the winds of hurricane season.

These little things you fail to control, the things that drive you the maddest, they are alive, and that is enough for them to be torturous and to be beautiful.

You can’t get ahold of your dad; as much as you try, it is like he has disappeared. 

You breathe in. 

Dad is out of reach. 

Your eyes rise to revise his obituary. 

About the Author...

Carter Manalla is a sophomore at the Willow School in New Orleans, where he is currently a part of an intensive creative writing program. He focuses on socio-political topics, but nothing he writes is limited to being one thing.

About the Artist...

Born in Mississippi, yet  raised just outside of New Orleans, Krislyn Fraser is an artist whose portfolio includes work specializing in pastel, dream-like atmospheres and imagery through 2D, 3D, digital, and photography mediums.