2026 Memory Contest Winner
Braced Against the Current
Flies circle my cheeks as we drift
on rafts in the leaf mantled pool,
eyes squinting or shut against the sun
and growling thunderclouds.
We are trying to earn back our luck
by leaving our bodies
to the wind that swims
like a foghorn no one hears
across everything, but here
it’s explicit; we watch mother clear the lawn.
Her waist folded under the weeping
lymph of her bilateral mastectomy,
like Newton’s law of motion,
tipping in reaction.
We ran from the breaking
news of her cancer to the backyard
dressed in maple syrup crusted
pajamas, surrendering
toaster towers we built
from French toast sticks, convinced
her recovery hinged
on the cinnamon ease of Mother’s Day:
breakfast trays with glasses
of roses and pulpy grapefruit spread
on her king bed. Now, floating
late July sky pours down
parsimonious light. We are far
from crisp white linens attuned
to nurses’ orders, far from
the worry of waiting rooms.
All we have is havoc in our heads
and chlorine dripping over grassy
lips of the deep end as confident
as capital, or love, trickling a nonhuman
melody on cobblestone ahead.
Sparrows punctuate the afternoon.
Their laughter swells.
What do I care about?
I know she keeps being my mother
when she plays her piano fingers
along my arm as the radio
begins some bright
Grace Lynn is an emerging painter who lives with a chronic illness. Her work explores the intersections between faith, the natural world, art and the body. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and investigating absurd angles of art history.