Baby Vultures, Mason Jars, and the Moon - Josalyn Monahan

Rural Nebraska opens the night above me,

pouring black paint across the sky—when it

drips it leaves stars above the farm,

shadows on the ground.

Outside, corn husks rustle on their stalks, owls

call from the trees, unknown feet press gravel

into dirt. Shivering

under quilted blankets, bed creaking

beneath me. Tossing, turning. The house sighs

behind a door leading to lonely bedrooms,

unoccupied for years, mattresses  stripped and

leaned against floral wallpaper.

Cramped closets full of yellowed documents, moth-

eaten suit jackets, and sepia polaroids— family

members with names long lost.

My grandpa’s eyebrows are copied

onto stiff high school graduates,  his nose appears

under dress uniform berets, and his weathered hands

grasp decades of equipment, but his smile doesn’t

grace their pale cheeks.

Ancestral eyes watch as I sneak down

carpeted stairs. Stay on the edges, they

creak less. Don’t turn on the light. 

Don’t get startled when all the clocks

sound off at once: the chugging of trains

harmonizing with a medley of bird calls. If

awakened, my grandparents’ calloused

hands would herd me back to the room, 

the unread books, the record player covered in a layer of dust.

You need sleep, they’d say, before returning to their John

Deere blankets and stained glass reading lamps.

But the quiet shuffling of my feet under the pink comforter

isn’t enough to ground my thoughts. I tiptoe away

from our old toys, train tracks without trains,

LEGO sets without instructions, carrying my carrion thoughts.

Downstairs, everything is dark, starlight through curtains

guiding me past secretary desks and grandfather clocks.

A wood electric organ peeks through layers of shadow,

keys like charred bible book

spines and bones. Sunlight will introduce

out-of-tune renditions of The Entertainer. In the

kitchen, I drink water while watching a possum

sneak across grass looking for cat food

to steal. The sharp echo of metal snapping

together tells me she was probably caught in our trap.

I begin to mourn her, knowing once the sun rises

Grandpa will shoot the possum while

I wonder why we can’t take her back to the forest.

The moon paints inky pictures of wind chimes and tiger

lilies, stretches their likeness with every brush stroke so

they can touch the door in the ground that leads to the

cellar. We call it The Cave.

Dirt floor, empty shelves, a pallet half-filled with mason jars.

Going in there makes my skin itch. Earlier, while gathering

jars for her homemade applesauce, I told Grandma about

sunless unease, and she shook her head. I am

the oversensitive child, and her country-grown

sensibilities don’t understand why the darkest corners

of our hay barn are inaccessible to me,

why laying on the roof of our pig shed,

sun holding me close against the tin, is where

I am the most peaceful. She doesn’t see

threats in those unknown spaces, instead

anticipating the possibilities.

The dark nests in the chicken coop either have

eggs or they don’t, so she reaches without

hesitation. In her footsteps, I try to abandon

anxiety but find myself asking shadows

to have mercy on me; let me see clearly; Remove

my risk of finding something I couldn’t prepare

for. My thoughts have nails that lightly scratch

against my linoleum skin as they skitter across 

my freckles like small, hungry mice. I stand in the

doorway of our kitchen, leaning out to try and see if

the possum is dead or alive in the trap before

I ask a question of the moon, the shadows, the farm cats

who don’t like to be touched, the vultures hissing from

their nest in the garage. I ask them why I can’t stop the

constant writhing fear in my mind. I ask if all the

nervous knots will ever go away.

They don’t answer.

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Josalyn Monahan received her BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in December 2021, where she was president of the UNO Writing Club, Creative Nonfiction Genre Editor for 13th Floor Magazine, and a two-time recipient of the John J. McKenna Undergraduate Scholarship for Creative Writing. She is currently working towards an MA in English at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she earned the Summer University Recognition Fellowship. Her poetry and essays appear in High Shelf Press, Roadrunner Review, Poets’ Choice, and more. She intends to become an educator, and she is currently a Content Editor at Hurrdat Marketing.