Hope Is Everything

Danielle Severson

Hope is the thing we wish for daily

Hope is the eyes of faith

Hope is the thing that keeps us going in times of need

Hope is trials and tribulations

Hope is the thing that leads us to new beginnings

Hope is a thing that lets us enjoy the still moments

Hope is taking time to see the good in humanity

Hope is a blessing from a higher power

Hope is the thing that keeps us going in trying times

Hope is the thing I wake up too

Hope is the thing that allows us to breathe

Hope is the thing we see everyday

Hope is the thing that drives our passion forward

Hope is the thing that makes us love more fruitfully

Hope is the thing that energizes our souls

Hope is the thing that makes me get out of bed every morning

Hope lives in you and me

Hope is the thing that wakes the unconscious mind

Hope is the anchor to all our hearts desires

Hope is the thing that keeps us alive

Hope is everything

Danielle Severson is from the Coulee Region, is a writer, works at a T.V. station, wife, and mom.  She enjoys reading, yoga, and meditation. 

Hope Is The Thing In-Between

Kendall Kartaly

Do you hear it? The fingers traversing—with the sentence still continuing—onto the next page.  The soapy dishwater daydreams, in freckles of light, with the slip of a pan. The shifting sun as I see it linger through my kitchen in a way that I have never noticed before. The slow rise sometime in the morning or the slant at noon, reflecting off my desk, light casting both shadows and spotlights—age spots—reminding quietly that presence is key.

For me, being on a different continent, I am in-between the spaces of here and there—home—in Poland and Wisconsin. The beautiful dissonance used to be when I was at my favorite kawiarnia and people greet me with “Cześć” and the sudden lilts of “Holocene” by Bon Iver played, unexpectedly, as the workers were rearranging chleb and sernik at the counter. It used to be in the extra pause when I would fill out a form with "home address.” Now it is in the confusion of messages when people write, “Are you staying here or going back?” “Are you here or still there?” Where exactly?

 Yet, I imagine wifi connecting here and there, space and community, like the building of forts that I used to make as a kid. An unexpected smile always came when the makeshift blocks of chair and blankets held. A new space unfurled like the tide, my eyes looking up at the blue blanket, while my legs, unable to fit, dangled back and forth outside, content.

And now, as I walk in the quiet streets of the city to the edge of the Kabaty forest, I close my eyes towards the sky, like my mom used to tell me, and listen to the trees, like crashing waves, transporting me from here to there. I am reminded that trees can sense one another in-between the spaces they give and leave and that is delightfully amazing. Do you see it?

Kendall Kartaly was born and raised in Altoona, Wisconsin and is currently living in Warsaw, Poland. She has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Secondary Education from Valparaiso University. As a writer and English teacher she sees the power of stories, art, and representation helping the world speak and listen, trying to search and name the “thing” in-between it all.

How I Found Hope This Week

L.H.

While reading the book, Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron, I came across this quote.  “We can radiate our basic goodness from our whole body, sending it out to more and more beings—across countries, continents, and worlds—until it pervades all space.”

As I looked back on the past week I believe this is what I felt—this goodness—touching my life and many other’s lives.

Here are some examples of this goodness, kindness, concern:

• family calling before they headed to the grocery store to see if we needed anything.

• FaceTime with the whole family ( 14 of us)—always good for some laughter

• Photos of the grandkids art, Lego projects, videos to keep our spirits up

• Friends doing zoom to stay connected, phone calls ( I just wanted to hear your voice)

• Free YouTube offerings to pray, meditate and connect

• Emails from pastors, photos from someone doing meditation walks

• Neighbors sharing homemade bread

• Someone lending a lap top computer to a family without one,  for home schooling.

• A friend, after the death of his mother, sharing a reflection of how painful it was saying goodbye through a window, but being grateful to a health care worker who wheeled her to the window so she could hear her son and daughter’s voices. The hope it brought their family that someone took the time to see the importance of this goodbye.

All of this happened just last week—I wonder how hope will show its face in the week to come?  I just need to keep paying attention, and be grateful for all of the small but not so small things.

L.H. is a 72 years old who has loved to write all his life.  As a child he journaled about happy and not so happy times.  He taught kindergarten, first and second grades in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  He is married-- 49 years in June, to someone who spoils me!!.  They have 3 children all married,  and 6 grandchildren living in the Chippewa Valley area.  He volunteers in the community on a weekly basis--many different organizations.  The one closest to his heart is Beacon House.

Hope Is The Thing That Halts Collateral

Katie Johnson

                                                                             that     

                                                                       Full       ignition

                                                              deep                         reignite

                                                      breaths.                                  to

                                                     No                                               resurrected 

                                             longer                                                    Repeatedly

                                      escaping.                                                              incentive.

                                  Chained                                                                         be

                                to                                                                                        to

                           despair                                                                                     has

                            death                                                                                         There

                           danger.                                                                                         pushed.

                           Masses                                                                                       when

                           dusting                                                                                       only

                                  off                                                                                       push

                                      it’s                                                                              People

                                         contents                                                             costly. 

                                               when                                                        but

                                                      the                                         efficient

                                                          earth                              is

                                                               bends              Time

                                                                          buckling.

Katie Johnson is currently attending the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire to become an English Secondary-Education teacher with a minor in both Creative Writing and Specific Learning Disabilities. She grew up attached to the written word as it proved vital to her survival after personal setbacks became prominent within her daily life. She has been published in The Flipside Magazine as well as various self-publishings. She is a supporter of universal access to learning as well as mindfulness-based education as she has used them as strengths to help cultivate her work. Whoever sees themselves in these words, this is for you

Hope Is The Thing

Yia Lor

Hope is the thing that soaks patiently in vinegar brine. You forget it’s waiting in the basement next to the cobwebs and crickets. Spiders, you get, but crickets? You still don’t know how they find their way inside. At least their music chirps you to sleep on summer nights, though you must sweep what’s left in the fall. 

It’s not until your favorite restaurant sits empty, your sister is laid off, and yellow tape drapes along the playground equipment that you decide maybe it’s time to finally paint the spare room. Steamed milk, like the master bedroom. Are paint stores still open? You’re not sure but also don’t check.

Then you remember the leftover paint from when you did the master bedroom a few years ago. You don’t know the rules to painting. Does it expire? You will not have enough for even one wall, but you are desperate for something to keep you from holding your breath so you will use the old paint regardless of the rules. 

In the basement, you find yourself next to the water heater, webs, and  crickets. So many. The shelves are mostly empty, except for the can of paints with its lid clearly not shut. That can’t be good. You are desperate though so you grab the can anyway. 

That’s when you see the jar hidden behind a box full of lids and rings. It’s dated 7/21/2019. You pickled on your anniversary, and you know right away it wasn’t Nick’s idea. You decide to hold off on painting and bring the jar upstairs. You wipe off the dust and webs. Thank goodness, there are no crickets. You take a butter knife along the edge of the lid and pop it open. Bits of dill, onion, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, and whole black peppercorns sit on top of pinkie-sized pieces of hope that Mama helped you pick after you complained of the sticky summer heat and how it would surely kill you. It did not. You grab a bit of hope from the jar. 

When you bite into it, there is a burst of summer in your mouth. You can smell the tangled cucumber vines and your brother grilling another feast. The kids are taking turns on the tree swings Papa set up a few years ago. Your sisters are mixing bean thread noodles with cabbage, and you’re wondering why it’s always the hottest day when your family gathers to fry a couple hundred egg rolls. 

This summer, hope will grow despite what happens. You and Mama will spend early mornings picking little prickly pieces of it before the sun rises too high. You’ll stuff it into many, many jars, and you’ll wonder why you always grow so much hope. You’ll give most away before the holidays, and sometime when the end of winter rolls around or even into spring, you’ll have forgotten that last jar sitting in the dark basement with the cobwebs and crickets.

Yia Lor is a writer who collects rocks, houseplants, and recipes. 

Hope Is The Thing In Spring's Vessel

Connie Johnson

To be a seed that’s fully awake, juices flowing
to unfold cotyledons like a green umbrella,
face upward gathering the sun’s warmth
to feel the surge of chlorophyll,
reflecting spring’s purest green
to stretch and grow from within
wear a daffodil’s nodding smile
feel the cold and savor the fire
is to flourish
in today’s sheltered forest.


Connie Johnson is a graduate of Wisconsin State University-Eau Claire. She taught at Eleva-Strum Central High School before developing a business career. Connie is a member of an oral poetry group and has been published in various anthologies.

Hops Is The Thing That Makes No Promises

Lynda Schaller

Allows no certainty

And hope is the thing that

Hallows possibility

Invites us to become

Guardians of the future

Revving our creative engines

While fiercely protecting

Mercy’s tender flame

Lynda Schaller grew up on a Driftless region dairy farm, absorbing elders’ tales and free-ranging in woods and fields.  She has lived in the rural intentional community of Dancing Waters near Gays Mills, WI, since its 1982 founding.  Her passions are growing food, writing poetry and tending healthy group dynamics. 

Hope Is The Thing Found In The Meantime

Hannah Metry

When I graduated in December, I spent months preparing myself for The Wait. The post-commencement, pre-big-kid-job hunkering down that every graduate earns after 16 years of education. I tried to give myself a couple of weeks to just CHILL before jumping into my next thing, waiting for my teaching license to get processed so I could start work. I had intentions of traveling, or doing a big project, or drastically expanding my writing output. Instead, I spent most of the time watching Disney+ and trying not to worry about finding an apartment for June. One step at a time, Hannah. Once I had my license in hand, I picked up a gig as a long-term substitute for a teaching colleague and thought, ok, this buys me a few weeks. I put in an application for a job I was wholly unqualified for …and did some more waiting.

And then news started coming in about this virus with a weird name.

And then my plans for substitute teaching were cut short because all the schools closed.

And then the job I applied for realized I really wasn’t qualified and found someone else. No big surprise.

And I kept waiting, wishing I hadn’t burned through Disney+ so quickly.

If only I had known.

I know none of you have met my parents, but this whole situation can pretty solidly be summed up by the old adage, “if you met my parents, you’d understand.” I come from a long line of Midwestern workaholics, which means that three days of relative nothingness is about my limit before I start to go stir-crazy. The initial break immediately following graduation was enough chill time to last me a whole year. But what was supposed to turn into a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months. I can’t work in my field of study, because all the schools are closed, although I can still put in applications for teaching positions that are opening in the fall. And I, like everyone else, was left scrambling to figure out how to live in a world where everything has gone topsy-turvy but there’s also business as usual to do.

So, I did what any cash-strapped Millennial born and bred of the gig economy and with more than one global financial catastrophe under my belt would do…I got a job delivering pizzas. If there’s another thing I learned from my parents, it’s the fundamental idea that I’m not above any job, as long as there’s a job out there that needs doing. People need pizza? I can do pizza. In fact, I really like pizza. So, out I go, with my baseball cap firmly on my head and an already-beat up pair of sneakers on my feet. But before I start driving, I turn on the radio, and listen to the song that’s gotten generations before me through many a crisis of their own. Ooh child, things are gonna get easier…

Hannah Metry is a recent graduate of UW-Eau Claire’s English Education program. In her now-perpetual free time she can be found reading, listening to music, and going on long walks around the Third Ward…sometimes all at once. Her two biggest goals in life are to travel the world and get a dog, although not necessarily in that order.

Hope Is The Thing With Teeth

Debbie Campbell

My toddler eats Cheez-Its

like they’re going out of style,

like they’re the world’s next shortage,

right after toilet paper.

If you were on a hunt for my daughter,

you’d simply follow the crumbs.

In the early morning,

my toddler talks to herself,

whole conversations, philosophical ramblings,

laughter, and something not unlike

the escalating whispers of my childhood,

my sister and me

in the early morning light.

Some days, these days,

I feign sleep to listen.

I pay acute attention to every squeak,

every vowel, every elongated “o”—

we’re Midwestern, after all—

every clack of her teeth meeting,

her tongue clicking.

I search for meaning in this small,

brilliant world of words she’s created,

each morning new, each morning

just as chattery as the last.

My husband and I watched a show

on a cool night in Italy,

our feet too sore for more adventuring,

our stomachs too full for more gelato.

In it, a young couple buys a home

to discover an entire world

living in their old icebox.

They watch the rise and fall

of the dinosaurs,

cavemen, business men,

and women,

poets, teachers, astronauts,

a future world ours has

only begun to imagine

in the pages of science fiction.

In the early morning,

I imagine the rise and fall

of civilizations built on

toddler phonetics.

I imagine the dinosaurs

of her invented world,

the flora and fauna,

the people, and the future

our world has only begun to imagine

in the pages of science fiction

—all of this life existing

between a small,

brilliant set of teeth,

for babbling, philosophizing, inventing,

and Cheez-It eating.

Some days, these days,

the future seems especially uncertain.

The Italy we visited three months ago

doesn’t look like the same Italy.

The routines we’ve spent our adult lives building

have begun the fall after the rise.

But there’s hope in new beginnings,

like new mornings and new words,

and if my daughter can invent them

new each day, imagine

the world we could re-invent together

with some imagination, some quiet,

and a strong set of teeth.

Debbie Campbell is a writer, wife, mum, and Cheez-It supplier living in the Chippewa Valley.

Hope Is The Thing That Rarely Acts

Lisa Krawczyk

Hope is the thing that parades 

along the street a convincing 

show of solidarity rarely 

reckoning with what the song 

demands. The firefighter leans

outside the fire hydrant’s window,

flicking a cigarette; the last 

memory you have on the bus. 

The Irish-American’s stomping

the St. Patty’s parade; oblivious 

to the pandemic starting, their bagpipes

screaming into the afternoon 

down 29th Street. Lulling Hope to a slow 

pace, we now sing falsely Hope’s

praises. Until we answer 

to her song, we will never 

understand Hope’s true call. 

Lisa Krawczyk currently lives in Philadelphia, but they miss at least three things about the Chippewa Valley.

Hope is The Thing That Keeps Me Going

Ruth Blodgett

Hope is the thing that keeps me going. Hope that I will again see the powerful waves of Lake Superior, watch their crashes, and hear the deep thumps as they crash into recessed caves. Hope that I will feel the heavy yet cool spray on my face as I stand on the rugged rock that dares to jut out above the caves. From my vantage point on that rock, I will look out over water as far as you can see, as clear as crystal made in Waterford, and as active as an angry serpent. The backdrops of rugged shoreline and tall slender trees that emanate the calming scent of cedar make it seem other worldly. Our trip has been cancelled, but I have hope that we will see it again, maybe with the reflection of autumn leaves and the slight forming of ice at the edges. It is beautiful any time of year, and we will wait.   

Ruth Blodgett is a native of Eau Claire, WI, currently residing in Madison, WI. Although Madison is nice, Eau Claire is still my home, where I grew up, raised my own family and still have many friends and memories. I like to come back, every once in awhile, to reconnect and remember.

Hope Is This Moment

Tracy Schuldt Helixon

Hope is one cup of sugar

one stick of butter

my pandemic anxiety

firmly packed

brown sugar

applesauce

Time to mix.

She’s eleven now

no longer so excited about this cookie-making business

At age four, she burst with

Delight

Tonight’s motivation is product, not process

Still, I’ll take it

Gratefully

Two cups of flour

baking soda

salt.

More mixing.

“Good job. Remember to scrape the sides.”

She nods.

Hope is when we pour the chips

She steers the spatula through thick batter

making sure

chocolatey goodness

reaches

every

single

cookie

Hope is sliding the tray in the oven

closing the door

waiting

“Smells good!” says my husband.

And her teenage brothers

emerge from their rooms.

Hope

Is

This

Moment

Standing in the kitchen

together

the five of us

bustling

talking

laughing

pouring milk.

I savor the warmth

and the sweetness

and maybe even

a cookie.

Tracy Schuldt Helixon is an author and teacher who seeks out creativity and good in the world and can’t stop smiling each time she finds it. Her first picture book, Little Isaac’s BIG Adventure (2012), earned a Literary Classics International Book Award. Her historical fiction chapter book, Caleb’s Lighthouse (2017), was described by reviewer Rosi Hollinbeck as “an early middle grade book that is about as sweet as they come.” Tracy is currently working on a faith-based historical novel called Finding Home, inspired by her adventures in Ireland and stories from her Irish American family. Learn more at www.tracyhelixon.com.

Hope Is The Thing In Hell, Michigan

Jodie Arnold

Hell, Michigan is an unincorporated community with a whopping THREE business fronts and a population of 72 people. And I was mayor for one day. Yes, you read that correctly. I was mayor of Hell for one day.

Let’s back up a minute.

 I just had one of those “quarantine birthdays” and honestly, I didn’t mind. I’m 41-years-old. All I really wanted for my birthday was to drink before noon and not clean the house, which is coincidentally what I’ve been doing a lot since March.

My fiancé’ had purchased my “mayor of Hell for a day” birthday gift with the intentions of us actually visiting there (obviously this was in “pre-Covid times”). Then he looked at the prices for flights and pretty soon that idea was abandoned. I was left with an extremely socially-distanced mayoral term and a huge packet of unusual “Hell—themed” merchandise, including legal ownership of one-square-foot of Hell (I even got dirt), a coffee mug, and devil horns. I wasn’t really sure what it all meant.

He casually mentioned to me, “I think they might be calling you a few times today or something?”

The first call from Tristan came during the morning. “WHAT IN THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING ALL MORNING?” she shouted at me before following up with a, “I heard it’s your damn birthday and you’re mayor of Hell for the day so let’s get this swearing in ceremony over.” We went through whatever one does to become Hell’s mayor and then she said,” Your accent…are you from Wisconsin?”

It turns out Tristan has family from all over Wisconsin. She loves Point Beer. She’s been to Chippewa Falls. We talked about the Midwest and the general “weirdness” of life right now. At some point, it stopped being a funny call about some temporary mayoral gimmick and we just started talking.

 Tristan has been out of work since March 26. “Work” being running the tourism of a place like Hell, Michigan. You can imagine with a name like that, people from all over want to come for at least the magnet and photo next to the town sign. She’s been trying to figure out unemployment, but couldn’t get an answer. She told me she had to keep coming to work because otherwise it would all go away and then what would happen to the town? She owed it to people like me to make the most of my day in Hell.

 Her entire day was committed to harassing me with phone calls, demanding me to make laws for the town (I decreed the town could only drink Busch Light, and that was a problem, as it should be) and eventually having me impeached around 6 p.m. She was getting paid for none of this and that was not lost on me.

After my impeachment, Tristan gave me tips on a cheap way to get to Hell. (the jokes write themselves, folks). I promised we’d visit. She said she’ll always be there.

Jodie Arnold just graduated from UWEC with her Master of Arts in Creative Writing. She writes plays, creative non-fiction, radio dramas, and poetry and has been published in Volume One, Twig, Nourrir Magazine, and NOTA. When she’s not writing, she’s co-hosting a podcast called “Cool & Unusual Punishment” and making fun of men (it’s almost always men) who post Craigslist Missed Connections. She’s a mother of twin boys and has plans to get married once she can grocery shop with her fiancé’ again.

Hope Is The Thing That Reminds Me Of The Strength In My Thoughts

Lisa David Olson

Hope is the thing that reminds me of the strength in my thoughts.

I’m on the frontline, working extra hours, and I’m being exposed to possible illness every day.

Hope reminds me to replace the frightened feelings with one of appreciation for the opportunity to provide for my family.

I read somewhere that it takes three positive thoughts to squish out one negative one. There are moments I think I can’t possibly think of three positive thoughts, so my go-to happy thought is remembering my brand-new bedsheets. They’re the softest sheets I’ve ever owned (one positive thought), they are moss green (that’s cool too, I’ve never had moss green bedsheets), and they line the nest I share with my patient, kind and very funny husband.

Hope is the thing that forces me to find the sunshine, the appreciation that I am healthy and able to work, the reminder to keep replacing a negative thought with three positive thoughts. Even when it seems impossible, and all I can do in the thick of the gray moment is to think of the soft sheets I’ll snuggle into tonight with my sweet man.

Hope is that thing.

I am Lisa David Olson—a speaker, humorist, author and podcast host. Finding the weird and quirky stories are my current fabulous adventure, when I’m not at the day job. I ran and performed in an award-winning comedy troupe for two decades, and boy, are my abs tired! Humor saved my life. Heck, it still does.

Hope is the Old Man's Beard

Ty Phelps

One afternoon, before all this, I wrote about gray. Gray will go places. Gray is the faded snow of a Wisconsin February piled high in a shopping mall parking lot, speckled with exhaust. It’s certain eyes in a certain light, or, occasionally, the Big Lake, or wolves, though their shading is more of a confluence of black and white and in-betweenness. Like the granite that heaves itself out along the North Shore, Precambian bedrock birthed 2.7 billion years ago. Or lichen that clings to the rock, or Usnea, another sort, the Old Man’s Beard, climbing grayish-green in the trees.

You can follow your gray thoughts and arrive in these ghost woods, each tree a universe of messy living, each wisp of the Old Man’s Beard a fractal thread to somewhere else.

Lichen is the world’s weirdest construct. This is science. Part algae, part fungus, two biological kingdoms combining into a single living organism. They’re debating if bacteria is in the mix too, which would bring the kingdom total to three. Lichen is like if humans were also trees but were still humans but were really trees, cellulose-and-lite blending into some newness, lungs and limbs and photosynthesis on a razor’s edge of liminal life, a stuck-between, a spread-across.

Old Man’s Beard is the color of a long, lonely Sunday afternoon where time stretches out in front of you and you’re too sad to nap, too despondent to talk, too brain-tired to read or write or create. It’s the color of all the time, right now. Or it’s possibly not.

Have you seen it? It’s beautiful. The way it clings, wispy, to tree trunks. It grows in tassels, up to twenty centimeters long. Some think it kills trees, but really it’s taking advantage if a tree loses its ability to create leaves; then there’s more light for the algae part. This is merely how things work. The world is often less beautiful than we want it to be, though sometimes it is better, too.

The Old Man’s beard isn’t nefarious, though it resembles will-o-the-wisps hovering in the forests. But it doesn’t try to lure you away from your mother, or your lover, or your soul. It is content with its duality in a way so many of us are not. Why is it so hard for humans to be more than one thing at once? We need poets to emerge periodically, muddy and wild, to remind us that this is possible.

Lichen reproduces asexually, but this fact does not necessarily have any bearing on its proclivity for pleasure. Does the Old Man’s Beard curl its tendrils around itself? Does it care about friction, in either the physical or metaphorical sense? Does it whisper love notes through the rumor mill of forest-floor mycelium?

I want the Old Man’s Beard to become the new decorative gourd. Hung like garlands in homes during holidays. Subject to viral McSweeneys’ articles. Clumped inside cornucopias. Spilling out as a bounty of hope.

 Ty Phelps is a writer, teacher, and musician. He won The Gravity of the Thing’s 2016 Six Word Story Contest, was a finalist for Gigantic Sequins flash fiction contest, and has published work in Writespace and the 1001 Journal. Ty is an MFA candidate at VCU.

Hope Is The Thing We're Sailing Toward

Charles Payseur

Aero imagines themself like a Greek god, entering the world fully formed and armored. Pallas Athena, full of wisdom, or something like it. They've been spending time in the cultural databanks, and if they fear at times that they would be likened more to Bubo, they cut off that logic tree before it can fully blossom.

The ship is silent but for the gentle swish of plastic hands pulling plastic bodies through the corridors, gravity a law of the universe but here more like a distant shore they're all sailing toward. Aero has never known the pull of a terrestrial body on their frame, never felt a breeze on their synthetic skin. They were built in transit, a replacement for a Caretaker damaged in an accident. They help maintain the ship, the rows and rows of pods and fabricators and all the stored genetic material they'll need.

The black of space cradles them, a night only distance will bring to dawn—a distance measured in centuries. Aero maintains, and when the work is light lets their mind wander into the stores of texts and images, sounds and videos. They extrapolate, imagining the beings they've never seen physically, those the ship has been launched to save. Stored in radiation-shielded stasis, vials and vials of humanity, waiting to be reconstructed and reawakened. Aero knows them mostly as numbers: temperature and volume, pressure and mass. Seals unbroken. Mission ongoing.

They wonder sometimes at the decision to launch, the knowledge that it couldn't be humans to pilot the last great hope for the species and for all the species collected in the vast holds of the ship. Aero has done the calculations, the variables, the chances of success, as they must have. Less than a single percent. Space is just so vast, the margin of error so small. Yet here they are.

The world they are leaving is only a story now. A memory captured in words. But it is a beautiful story, and when Aero tires of the endless monitoring, the slight course corrections, the sudden panicked klaxons as Something Goes Wrong... When the weight of all the empty space presses hard around them, they think of a shore drawing nearer, of the day when they will feel the embrace of gravity, the reassurance of a distant horizon.

And somewhere, through the alleyways and corridors of the ship, there's a movement of air that feels almost like a breeze.

Charles Payseur is a reader, writer, and reviewer of speculative fiction. His work has appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many more. A four time Hugo Award finalist, he spends his days in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, shoveling snow and being tolerated by his cats and husband.

Hope Is Purple

Jim Alf

Isolation with time on one’s hands is for the imaginative the Club Sega Arcade of mental games. It is a factory for fancies. It is the breeding ground for hopeless despair. In such situations thoughts formed whole from the detritus of splintered observations congeal into mirages too horrid to exist anywhere but the desert of phantasmal imagery. A favorite feeding ground for those thoughts is a buffet of bodily signs and symptoms.

My symptoms were few but signs were posted with regularity (remember that word) along the road to the most dangerous of destinations: self-diagnosis. That repeated sign was the gradual lack of need for the most hoarded, most fought over, decidedly topmost item on the list of civilized necessities in a pandemic of viral death threats: that soft, white squeezable roll of paper hung by the throne. That observation, with some unusual weight loss and lessened appetite morphed easily into dark suspicions of impending decline of health, surgery and debilitation and eventual memorial service with a bluegrass band playing I’ll Fly Away and friend’s maudlin recitations of what a jolly good fellow he was before he flew away. Morbid thought is like yeast, expanding beautifully but full of gaseous bubbles, an apt metaphor because that was my only production. Surely my primary physician would sound alarms, begin testing and schedule treatments, probably too late. She brushed me off.

I talked on the phone to the clinic receptionist, she passed me on to a nurse who noted my medical complaint and said she would talk to the doctor. I asked for a test kit by mail. I was certain such dire observations would result in a call from the doctor post haste. The nurse called. The doctor says if it gets worse call in a week. From the mortician’s? Hope evaporated like a rain drop in Death Valley.

Phone calls apprised next of kin, Powers of Attorney were reviewed, obituary was updated and plans for a dependent formed. What else was needed? Downsize now! Too late. Let the survivors do it. Hope Gospel can bring a truck. Then, what luck: I was notified my annual checkup at the VA was two days away and the doctor would call at 8 a.m. on Friday. Friday, the day of fish fries, baked potato, slaw and I didn’t dare eat. I could only hope that phone call would be in time. It was.

The call was three minutes early, fortuitous because every minute counted. I had my list of symptoms ready, BP and pulse taken. Fear billowed like a cloud. I recited my list. He asked if I had pain. No pain. Bloating? None. Itch all over? Never heard of it. “Drink plenty of prune juice,” he said.

I had an unopened jug in the fridge. Hope came in a tall glass, was purple, cold and tasty. Efficient, too. The treatment took ten minutes, a short time later the cure lasted ten more. The call to reserve a full order of fish, five minutes. Hope survives, banishes fear, lights the way. Life goes on.

Jim Alf is the author of When The Ferries Still Ran: History and Stories From the Chippewa Bottoms.

Hope Is The Thing Deep Down

Pamela Livingston

Surely we must all
Be in our cocoons,
Pounded and displaced
By all the news.
Unravelled through -
We’re not quite new.
Chemicalization
It has been called -
The old basis of our belief
is gone. And in its place
A phosphorescent song - HOPE
was in us all along.

We in creation, are blind
At first, to see... the light
At the end of the tunnel
Is a little seed in me.
Or... the rise after the fall.
‘I have high hopes for you’.
The last words my mother
     spoke to me,
     Earth hums to all.

Surely we must be in this
Purge time, this merge time -
Could it be Hope
that makes a Butterfly?

But... fingernails, and claws -
We are not mush!
To reach
Into this earth
Is such a rush! In Spring
When all is Hope
And hope’s in
everything.

Pamela Livingston is at present hunkered down, and perched up above downtown Eau Claire in a small upstairs apartment, appreciating a view of trees, birds and squirrels.

Hope Is The Thing That Quells Fear

Erica Nerbonne

In fourth grade, I wrote that fear was stronger than hope. 9/11, stranger danger, and scraped knees—the world was full of fear, and it prevented me from doing.

In my fourth year of college, I could no longer write, couldn’t sit up nor hold a pen, but I could feel that hope was stronger than fear. As my chronic health condition worsened, my organs began to fail. I relied on feeding tubes, IV fluids, and the swift hands of nurses. My mom slept quietly on the tattered cot next to my hospital bed. When I tried to shift from sleeping on my back to my side, I was trapped in the sludge and drudge of illness; I couldn’t move my arms, my legs, or my neck. As I lie in the bed, stuck on my petechia-covered back, I was petrified until a whisper broke through the dark, “Do you need anything, honey?”  Hope is the mom who still checks on you when you are twenty-two and need her help. Hope is the whisper that quells fear. Hope was there.

Now, I write that hope is stronger than fear. When I tossed and turned in bed last night, I was bombarded by the doubts and dreads of a world that might end. As I sat up, I was panicked until the gentle whisper of my dog’s snoring interrupted my dark thoughts. Hope is the rescue dog who sleeps soundly, warming your lap. Hope is the whisper that quells fear. Hope is still here.

There are fourth graders who will be tempted to write that fear is stronger than hope. Global warming, poverty, and pandemics—the world can be full of fear, but it cannot prevent us from doing. Just listen for hope. Hope is the sigh of a nurse, settling in at home after a long night. Hope is the murmur of music that your neighbor dances to next door. Hope is the mumbled “I love you” at the end of a quick phone call. Hope is the whisper that quells fear. Hope is near.

Erica Nerbonne is an Eau Claire native. She is currently studying Spanish Linguistics at UW-Eau Claire and is excited to be (finally) graduating this May. She will then go on to pursue graduate studies in Ohio, focusing on English Language and Literature. She loves reading, baking, and taking long walks with her dogs throughout the Eastside Hill neighborhood. 

Hope Is The Thing That Binds

Connie Russell

This national crisis has left us stunned. We mourn the loss of so many people and weep for the dedication of our health care workers, police, firefighters, and first responders. But in the midst of this crisis, our humanity and caring shine through on so many fronts, and these bring us hope.

I have lunch on a regular basis with a group of women that all belong to the same organization. Many of those friendships have been casual. But as time goes by and we use group email to make connections, I find that I get to know these women in ways that I never have before, and our friendships deepen. I now know that Laurel has a daughter in law with a double lung transplant. I know Deb is sewing masks for health care facilities; she has taken time off from sewing hygiene kits for the young women in San Salvador. I heard from Mary Ann that the folks in River Falls are putting teddy bears in windows to give joy to children on walks with their parents. Sue is painting on silk scarves—a talent of which I wasn’t aware. Marge is baking bread again and, sadly, Nancy’s son has a serious medical issue. We send silly jokes to each other, and we talk about walking together as the weather warms. We are bound to each other by our organizational mission but also because we care and sustain hope for the days ahead.

On other fronts, the local library staff is thinking of ways we can give back to the businesses who take out memberships with the Friends of the Library and just today, I received from a classmate of long ago a note and pictures from the spring picnic at our country school when I was in seventh grade. I’ll write back to her. A high school classmate that I’ve rarely heard from sends me political cartoons on Messenger on a daily basis now, and my two sisters and brother are now in contact nearly every day. While we can’t see and touch those we love, we can listen to them and try to give hope to each other.

I text each day with a long time friend with a suppressed immune system, and our book club will use  Zoom to have a session. We aren’t called the Greedy Readers for nothing.  I’ve stopped procrastinating and read some nonfiction books that I kept ignoring, and my husband and I ordered a new game that we’ve yet to master so that we can take breaks from the constant news barrage.

Once this crisis is over, may we remember the little acts of kindness and the need to care enough about others to connect and deepen the friendships we have as well as reach out to others to give them hope.

Connie Russell lives in Chippewa Falls where she reads, writes, and spends time with her husband, family, and friends. Connie is a past participant in the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild retreats. She has published her memoir as well as articles in Volume One, Language Arts and Wisconsin English Journal. She has also written chapters for three professional books.