Kim Patton

                I watch as the 19-year-old slowly opens his notebook to read his poem to ten strangers, daring the possibility of critique. He is new. I have only seen him twice before. As his lips move, his heart speaks one turn of a phrase after another, the rhythm of the piece never ceasing to touch a depth that we all, his readers, feel. I hear his words but dig around for their meaning that goes beyond surface definition.        We are a Writer’s Group that meets twice each month to chisel each other’s talents, encouraging the labor-intensive process that comes with our common goal of becoming better writers. We have all set other things in our lives aside to focus on the task of putting words on paper and then reading them aloud, releasing the white doves into the expansive sky.        The new kid reads, and his art unfolds like a vulnerable flower, and we gently touch its petals. We take...

       In 2016, I was moving into a house for the first time, adjusting to a new job and getting used to Florida life. But something else was nagging at me, pulling loose threads in my mind and I just couldn’t let it go. My childhood memories burst through my mind, demanding to be written down.        I started scrawling in a red journal, and as soon as I pressed pen to paper, I didn’t stop for months. I wrote about my little brother and I playing with mud in the woods. I wrote about what it was like to watch my older brothers wrestle in tournaments. I wrote about my dad protecting me, my mom teaching me.        Soon I felt seven years old again, reliving memories about the swing in my backyard. I felt fifteen years old when remembering my high school. Writing became a form of therapy by rehashing a former life. My senses flooded with smells and tastes and noises as if I had experienced it that day and was just sitting down...