Stop Here. This is the Place.

an excerpt, words by Susan Conley and photo by Winky Lewis

Mostly we ran up and down the boardwalk to see the mail boat come in. We didn’t have a radio, so we sang pop songs out loud together on the porch, my brothers and cousins and me. The trees on the island had long, wild hair like me. This is what I remember. My mother. Always my mother. And how my brother chased me in the dark on the dirt road but stopped when I got scared.