Tonight we are pleased to announce voters’ top five selections. They are

5) “Second Coming” by Emily Harris Adams

4) “Red Rock” by Marianne Hales Harding

3) “No Substitute for Chocolate” by Jeanna Mason Stay

2) “In Bulk” by Marilyn Nielsen

and our Grand Prize Winner . . .

1) “Stillborn” by Merrijane Rice

Congratulations!

When we started the Lit Blitz, we knew there was an audience for LDS literary works, but we’ve been impressed and encouraged by how strong and supportive that audience has been. Since we were also impressed by the quality of submissions the contest received, we’ve decided to launch a new online literary venue called Everyday Mormon Writer. This week we’re featuring a poem by Lit Blitz Semi-Finalist Jake Balser and art by Nick Stephens. We will feature one work per week for the next few months as we build up a body of quality work until we are able to publish every weekday.

Any works that were submitted to the Lit Blitz will be considered for publication on Everyday Mormon Writer. We also encourage you to submit other short works; details can be found on our Submissions page.

Thanks once again for your interest and support.

Scott Hales
James Goldberg
Nicole Wilkes Goldberg

But we only have one Grand Prize.

The winner of the Mormon Lit Blitz will be selected by audience vote. Voters must first read (or hear, in the case of voters who are not yet literate) at least five of the Mormon Lit Blitz finalists and then rank their top five. These five ranked votes should then be emailed to mormonlitblitz@gmail.com with VOTE in the subject line. (One vote per person please, even if you have multiple email accounts.)

First place votes will be counted as five points, second as fourth, and so on. The piece with the most points by the end of March 15th will win.

Again, in order to be valid, votes must:

1) Be sent to mormonlitblitz@gmail.com with VOTE in the subject line.

2) Include five pieces ranked from 1st favorite through 5th favorite. Listing votes either by title or by author is acceptable.

Feel free to include any other feedback you have on the Mormon Lit Blitz in the body of the email below your vote list.

As a reminder, the finalists are
Marilyn Nielson’s “In Bulk,”
Wm Morris’s “The Elder Who Wouldn’t Stop,”
Jeanna Mason Stay’s “No Substitute for Chocolate,”
Emily Harris Adams’  “Second Coming,”
Sandra Tayler’s “The Road Not Taken,”
Merrijane Rice’s “Stillborn,”
Kathryn Soper’s “Oil of Gladness,”
Emily Debenham’s “The Shoe App,”
Deja Earley’s “Cada Regalo Perfecto,”
Kerry Spencer’s “The Gloaming,”
Jonathon Penny’s “Babel,”
Jeanine Bee’s “The Hearts of the Fathers,”
and Marianne Hales Harding’s “Red Rock.”

You can’t take a picture of this.
No matter the angle, the pictures are just rocks, sky, water.
Nothing stirs in me when I look at them.
I am still caught in the swell of forgettable catastrophes, tight and hurried.
I delete every one of them. And then I take a few more.

Halfway up the sheer rock wall that dwarfs me is a tiny alcove—pale reddish brown rock against endless black verticals
aaaaaa—my safe place in the universe.
I hover in that alcove, watching the one stream waterfall in its halo of fine mist, an unseen hand taking a big red eraser to the tourists below, the world staying on that side of this completely insurmountable, red rock wall.

What is it about this place that unwinds the soul, one chink at a time?

My grandfather spent a lifetime exploring and photographing these paths
aaaaaa—Zion’s, Bryce, Capital Reef, Goblin Valley, Cedar Breaks.
The idle moments of his last months were filled with long, scenic drives.
If I asked him where to go he would say, “Keep driving ‘til you see red rock.”
It became a funny story to tell.

But now that I have found refuge in these walls I wish I would have granted
a dying man’s last wish, driven 8 hours in the desert, sat
at the base of the soaring rock and accompanied him
aaaaaahalfway on his journey to heaven.

# # #

Marianne Hales Harding is a playwright and personal essayist who landed in poetry due to time constraints.  Nationally produced and locally lauded (she was Playwright in Residence for the Utah Shakespeare Festival), she is also the mother of two, a dog owner, and a marathon finisher.

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My dad thinks he only taught me one thing growing up. Every chance he got he would remind us, “Kids, never fight a monkey.” I’m not sure what internet video or TV special he saw about fighting monkeys that prompted him to make this his motto, but it is something I’ll always remember. Once, our home teacher shared with us a moment he had when he reminded his daughter of one of those oft repeated Mormon adages. Something like “The spirit goes to bed at 10:00,” or “Modest is Hottest.” His daughter had heeded his sage advice and, of course, avoided something major, like an explosion at a nearby gas station or a freak tornado. After that story my dad said, “I wish I had taught my children something worthwhile like that.” My brother and I piped in, “Dad! You did teach us something important! Remember? ‘Never fight a monkey!’” My dad looked a little embarrassed at our praise.

After that home teaching appointment I spent a while trying to extract meaning from my father’s words of wisdom. I wanted him to feel better about this lasting memory he had created for his children. Maybe the monkey was a metaphor for temptation. If you avoid temptation at all costs you don’t have to worry about it. But if you go to the zoo and watch temptation, even behind reinforced steel bars, it will throw feces at you. Worse yet, if you try to take a picture with temptation, it can reach through the bars and bite your hand off. Or maybe the monkey was a symbol of the spirit. You keep the spirit with you, and if you always listen to him and heed his warnings, you won’t have any problems. On the other hand, if you try to fight the spirit you will lose, and probably end up missing several fingers and at least one ear. In this metaphor the spirit has razor sharp teeth and can heft 600 pounds above his head without breaking a sweat.

Over the years my dad tried to instill in me several other morsels of wisdom. When confronting me about my contraband boyfriend in sixth grade, he reminded me, “If you resist the temptation now it won’t be so hard later.” When confronting me about my contraband boyfriend in ninth grade, he said, “Boys only want one thing.” When confronting me about my contraband boyfriend in eleventh grade, he sighed. “I wish you would learn from the things your mom and I have been trying to tell you.” (In hindsight, I can see why he thought I wasn’t taking any of his advice to heart.)

Of course, there were other situations in which my father used these dad-isms. One I distinctly remember was after a long battle over my math homework. My dad had insisted that we go over each and every answer together, ensuring that I completely understood the principles of algebra that I was supposed to be learning. All I wanted was to be excused from the table so I could call my boyfriend… I mean… read a book… to some orphans. My dad got so excited about the math that I was learning, that he took the opportunity to explain to me why I was learning how to use sine, cosine, and tangent (or SIN, COS, and TAN, as I liked to call them). He drew a long curve that was supposed to be a small part of a circle and started a ten-minute lecture about measuring the length of a curve. After my exaggerated sighs became louder than his speaking voice and I was slouched so far down in my chair that my head was the only part of my body touching the backrest, the lecture came to a close. My dad looked at me seriously and said, “You know, you’ll only get out of it what you put into it.” I stopped moaning, sat up in my chair, and looked at my dad. Then I rolled my eyes at him. Yes, I decisively joined the club of eye-rollers—presided over jointly by Laman and Leumel. (Alma the Younger had a good run as treasurer before he absconded.)

In all those angst-filled years that my father spent trying to teach me, the only maxim that I truly took to heart without question or attitude was “never fight a monkey.” And after that home teacher’s visit my father believed that his righteous desire to impart wisdom to his oldest child was hinged on that one phrase.

Last month I heard about a guy who had raised a chimp to maturity. It was his pet and companion, like a huge terrier with opposable thumbs and the ability to snap your neck, given the right mood. One day this guy was playfully rough-housing with his pet chimp and the game turned ugly. The chimp went from Koko to King Kong in an instant. It was as if he suddenly remembered that he was a proud and dignified wild animal and he refused to be contained by leashes or diapers any longer. He wanted to be free—in a place where he could fling his feces whenever he so pleased. The chimp bit off the man’s fingers then, in true law-of-the-jungle fashion, went for straight for the groin. I’m willing to bet that, at that point in his life, that man wished that he had a father who had cared enough to remind him, “Never fight a monkey.” Or maybe he did, and he just rolled his eyes as his father tried his best to convince his son that he knew what he was talking about.

# # #

Jeanine Bee lives on the East coast with her husband and son, and likes to think that she was a harder-than-average teenager to raise. Not because she is proud of the fact, but because she is hoping that what goes around will not, in fact, come around.

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At the moment the languages were confounded, I was bent over a parchment, trying to ignore the sounds of construction that by then filled the city. I had no interest in the project myself. Indeed, I was apprehensive about its appalling hubris and the mind-boggling safety issues it presented. This was philosophical and personal. My brother oversaw construction of the balustrades that wound their way up the tower—a feat of engineering science I could never grasp, but that gripped him like a childhood fever: numbers were his, letters mine. Daring was also his: he always took on the most perilous duties himself.

I kept my misgivings to myself, however, even from him. The prophets who had spoken warnings of judgment and destruction were dead or in the quarries, so I kept quiet, and hoped the elders would grow bored and leave it to crumble and molder as they had so many other ventures.

My hope was vain: my brother strapped on ever-more complicated harnesses and launched out into a more precarious emptiness with every shift. I heard he worked with such energy and skill that he had very nearly caught up with the construction of the tower core. When it became inefficient to descend each day, he slept at altitude, passing into an impenetrable glare of blue.

I tried not to think of it.

The moment itself played out subtly. I was writing in the free-flowing script of our old, common language—what we called it I do not remember, for the words of that language are gone from me—when I heard a rumble above the sounds of construction, a tone distinct from the usual grating of stone. It was followed by alarums and screams, so I went to the window, from which I could see only the base of the tower, even at this great distance.

The balcony afforded a better, though horrific, view: massive blocks tumbled down and outward from the tower’s center and an unfathomable height. My instinct was to rush to the scene and find my brother. This would have been futile, of course: he would have been at the very top, spared only if he were on the opposite side of the crumbling rock. It would take him days to come down. But I took up my tunic from the chair. I had just reached the door when a great wail went up from the direction of the tower, and the rumbling deepened and grew to a sustained crash, drowning out the screams of men and fear. I turned back to the window and knew it was too late, for in the place of the tower moved a mountain of rubble soon veiled in a storm of dust and agony that pushed out further and further from the tower and reached even my home with a fine, impetuous film.

I stood looking out into the grey for quite some time, grieving without feeling, not for the tower, but what I had lost to it.

And then there was profound silence, for hour upon exhausting hour.

I awoke to voices speaking words I did not know. This startled me. There was but one language, and I knew it, many said, better than anyone. But this I could not understand, and suddenly, apart from my grief, loomed fear.

My parchment had blown a little back on the table when the concussion of the collapse had reached my quarter. I scanned the first several lines, and did not recognize the hand or the language, so I turned to my library and pulled scroll after scroll, book after book from the shelves looking for anything lucid, anything familiar but no character spoke to me, no word meant anything at all. It was all soundless cipher. I recognized, could understand, nothing. I doubted all my memories, wondered if I had ever written or read a legible word. My life’s work, my memories, my very identity were suddenly and incontrovertibly a fantasy come crashing down in a cruel and ugly revelation. All that made sense in the world, all that had been given to us by the gods, had suddenly been re-veiled, rolled up into silence and dust.

I heaved, panting and wild, against a wall for several moments, sweat and clarity pouring out of me into the heat and dust and fear. And then I saw my parchment on the table, and went back to look at it once more, as if it would somehow make sense.

I could read the last five characters. Line after line of that flowing hand I now recognize as our old language were incomprehensible and alien to me: but there, at the precise moment I heard the first shouts and cries, just before the rumbling broke through my concentration, were five distinct hieroglyphs of the kind now familiar to you, and according to which system you are now reading this memoir.

Of those who congregated in the days and weeks after the collapse, I am the only one who remembers that old language—or rather, that there was an old language. For the rest, it is as if we always spoke what we now speak, and came to this valley only to escape the wrath of God that had confounded all those other tongues. They have forgotten brothers, sisters, lovers, and parents with whom they could no longer communicate, and made new families, as if we were born of the tower’s collapse, and never lived before it.

But I have thought long and remembered hard, and have discovered that caution, though wisdom, is also a kind of courage. It is what allows me to tell this story to you. I have never written of this before, my son, and never will again. And I have let all my old learning be lost, for fear it would inspire men to build another obscenity. Perhaps they’ll be content with monuments to the gods, and never again presume to seek them in their heaven.

# # #

You can hold on to that delusion until night.

Because at night, in the hospital, everything changes.

The halls that were blindingly bright during the day are dark and quiet. A faint glow comes from the nurses’ station, but the chatting and clanging of daytime motion and action is suppressed. The stillness is only punctuated by the contrast between that daytime clatter—you’d gotten used to it without realizing—and the quiet dark of night. In daytime, nurses rush up and down halls. They laugh and sometimes gossip. There are people who bring trays of food, there are visitors, doctors, and phones that ring nonstop.

And then there are the lullaby bells on the daytime loudspeaker.

Every time a baby is born, they play lullaby bells. The bells chime every hour. Often more than once. All during the day, you feel a sense of life bustling all around you. Life bustling down the hallway, life bursting into the world.

But at night it’s quiet.

The lullaby bells don’t ring—either they turn them off for the night, or not that many babies are born during the night, I can’t say for sure. Just that birth-bells don’t ring anymore.

Instead, death-bells call.

Code blue: breath has stilled, heart has stopped. It rings seven, eight, nine times a night. It rings so consistently in the quiet dark, you hear it as a clock chime. And it’s when the codes ring you can’t hold onto your denial anymore. Because there aren’t that many beds in a hospital, and you can’t hide from the bells when you’re lying in one of those beds. Every time you hear a code called while you sleep, part of you drowsily wonders if this one is for you. So, half-awake, you listen. For them to name the floor number and the room number, to call for staff in that area to rush over to whichever soul is hovering in that limbic space between life and death.

Never ask for whom the bells toll, right?

In Scotland they have a word for the limbic space between life and death—it’s the same word they use to describe that time when it’s not quite day… but it’s not quite night. It’s a word that describes the nether space that hovers in between any two things, neither one nor the other. They call it the gloaming.

A hospital is a gloaming. Inside it the veil hovers open, ushering in life by day, watching it go by night.

Codes must ring during the day too, but for some reason you don’t hear them then. Maybe some part of your mind knows that life and death are different sides of the same thing, so you unconsciously banish one into the dark place. The quiet place.

Sometimes in the night hospital, after you’re awake enough to realize, no, that was not your code, and, no, you are not sick enough that anyone expects it to be your code, you lie still for awhile. You’ve already checked your pulse ox monitor and your blood pressure cuff.  You’ve already listened until you could hear the thumping of your living heart, already taken in a few calming breaths. There’s nothing left to do but lie quietly.

As you lie there, you see that there’s a green light in the hallway coming from somewhere out of sight. It bounces off the shiny floors—polished concrete. You hear a machine beep in the next room. You hear someone grunt out a soft moan as they turn over in bed. And after awhile you fall back into a restless sleep until pain wakes you up and you push the button for the nurse to come.

Soon enough morning comes and you can have your denial back once again. You can lose yourself in the lively chatter of nurses and visitors, phones, lunch trays, and the motion of daylight.

But you never lose that sense of gloaming until you’re back outside, back home. Away from the place of in-between.

And even then, it lingers.

# # #

Kerry Spencer teaches writing at Brigham Young University.  She learned about the word “gloaming” eight years ago in Scotland when she was teaching a study abroad course that included 200 miles of hiking over seven mountains. She accomplished this endeavor while undergoing a round of (pharmaceutically-intensive) in-vitro fertilization.  She recently published an essay in Irreantum chronicling the many drug-induced hallucinations that ensued.  She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and two small children.

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Watching three orphans scramble on half-buried tires,
and the others grip pencils and crayons as if we’d given them chocolate,
I turn my purse inside out.

The Altoids to a boy who sketches me on his new chalkboard,
looking up again and again to get the nose right—a Sesame Street oval.

My lip gloss to a slouching girl with a name I can’t pronounce
who loves geography and sweeps the cloistered walkways every day.

The crackers to a sweaty kid I pose near at group picture time;
we’re friends for the count of three.

My frozen water bottle to those we watch
through the back window of the bus
who jump and wave in the dust
and trash and shattered flowerpots
next to the technicolor Cristus in the dry fountain
His robe magenta,
His arms open,
a plump bird perched in His hand.

# # #

Deja Earley has published poems, essays, and stories in journals like Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Diagram, and several of her poems were recently included in Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets. She lives in the Boston area.

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Catherine liked setting up her laptop in the café because the internet was free and she had hacked the video camera feed outside. From that she had created an app that would ping anytime a man over six feet entered the store.

Graced with her father’s lanky genes, she had hit 5’10 in the tenth grade and stayed there. Worse, she had an addiction to three inch heels, courtesy of her mother, a heritage she clung to since she passed. So she needed the man in her life to tow the 6 feet tall line.

Otherwise the thousands of dollars she had invested in shoes would go to waste on their custom built racks in her generous walk-in closet. Her mother had always said “A good pair of shoes will chase away the blues.” Something Catherine had desperately needed after she was gone. Her obsession was more than mere vanity.

She would burn her shoes before she allowed others to label her as vain.

Catherine was chic, savvy, fashionable, and determined. Not vain.

Her phone pinged.

She looked up as the tinkle of bells signaled the entrance of a tall, dark, 6’2 hunk of man. Sure his chin was a bit too prominent and his stomach had a small pouch, but all that was forgivable in relation to his glorious height. She ran her fingers through her hair, glossed her lips and headed over to greet him.

Catherine opened her mouth to speak and a woman bumped into her. The woman tossed a “Sorry!” over her shoulder before she entwined her arms around the tall man’s neck. He hugged her back so tightly that both her feet left the floor. They kissed.

She glared at the woman, a small brunette that couldn’t be more that 5”2. There should be a law against that type of pair up. Better yet, an app that also informed her of random males’ relationship status. Defeated, she slumped back to her chair.

Her phone pinged again. Twice.

Could she really be that lucky? She turned to look at the prospective males.

They looked young, dressed in suits with little company name tags on the lapels. It couldn’t hurt to talk to them at the very least. She swooped her hair up into an elegant bun and smoothed her skirt as she stood.

Trying to make their meeting look natural she strode purposely as if she were going to get something up at the counter. She did a double take, and greeted them with a smile. “It’s not every day you see two gentleman fancied up in a small café,”

The first young man shrugged and reached out his hand, waiting for Catherine to shake it.

She blinked, finding the friendliness odd and shook his hand.

“My name is Elder Franks and this here—˝ he tilted his head toward his friend—“is my companion Elder Parson.”

Catherine leaned forward sure she had heard wrong. “Excuse me, say again. I thought you said both of ya’alls first names were Elder?”

“You heard correct ma’am. We’re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Why don’t you let us have a bite to eat with you and we’ll clear up the confusion?”

Catherine looked toward the quiet one, Parson, expecting him to laugh and tell her what a huge jokester his friend could be sometimes.

He smiled at her glance. “What would you recommend on the menu?” he asked.

“The coffee is top notch but for lunch I always get the fish and chips,” she answered.

Before she knew it two six foot tall bachelors were sitting at her table chatting her ear off but they were far from eligible. Apparently, the missionary life had some stringent restrictions, including no coffee or dating. They certainly knew how to be convincing and soon she was agreeing to come to church with them on Sunday. She found their sincere belief in forever families appealing, although unrealistic.

Perhaps, she would meet some nice—eligible— tall men there.

*

Armed for church with her tallest red pair of high heels, Catherine click-clacked her way up the sidewalk pavement. Taking in the simple but clean brick building in front of her she stumbled forward, just managing to prevent herself from face planting into the cement. Her high heel had slipped right off in the fall and she turned to retrieve it.

A couple walking by asked, “Are you alright?”

“Fine. Fine,” Catherine said and waved them off.

She stooped to pick up her high heel, but it was stuck. Her face burned red. The heel had wedged itself into the space between the sidewalk cracks and wouldn’t budge no matter how she tugged.

“Looks like you are in quite a predicament,” said an amused male voice.

“Um, uh, yes.” Catherine stuttered, looking up. He was average height.

“Want some help?” the man asked.

Catherine gestured helplessly to her trapped heel, annoyed. She’d paid a lot of money for this pair of red power heels.

The man stooped down and tugged on the shoe. “Wow, it’s really wedged in there.”

His hand was wedding band free. “Yes, I noticed,” she answered.

He pulled his keys out of his pocket and selected an attached leatherman. “Maybe we can lever it out with this.”

“Careful,” Catherine warned.

Unfolding the contraption he put the pointed edge under the heel. Catherine noticed that he had very nice shoes.

“I like your shoes. Frye’s classic oxford.”

He smiled. “Good shoes equal a good day.”

Catherine laughed. “My mother had a similar philosophy, which always made me want a program that will take a picture of a shoe and tell me where to find it.”

The shoe popped out of the crack.

“Oh, I’ve made an app for that.” he said.

Their eyes met as he handed her the shoe.

“Maybe after church you could tell me about that,” she said

“Oh, I’d love to,” he said. “Name’s Fredrick.”

They shook hands and walked inside together.

# # #

Emily Debenham graduated from BYU with a double BA in history and Latin teaching. She taught Latin for two years before she had her daughter. In her free time she reads, writes, blogs, and manages her husband (also a writer).

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The Elders’ Quorum president held up the quart-sized bottle for everyone to see. “For anointings we use olive oil—preferably extra virgin,” he explained. The women murmured in approval. They knew that extra virgin, product of the first pressing of the olives, is the best.

The liquid in the bottle shone a rich yellow. Pretty, but not as impressive as the olive oil my grandmother poured freely in the days of my childhood. Imported from Greece, the thick green oil came in square, gallon-sized cans marked in geometric Greek. The filigreed designs in red and gold reminded me of the stained-glass windows in the Greek Orthodox church, where I fidgeted every Easter, nose wrinkling from incense, under the eye of the emaciated Christ hanging above the nave.

*

I curled on my side in the hospital bed, eyes squeezed shut. Anointed, I felt the droplets of oil seeping into my hair, cool and wet. Reed’s hands shook as he pressed his palms against my skull; his voice shook as he called me by name and began to pronounce a blessing of strength, comfort, and healing. All desperately needed. If the baby came now—three months early—his chance of surviving would be low, and his chance of thriving even lower. Yet as the words of the blessing seeped into my skin, soft and warm, I knew we would be okay. The baby might live, ; he might die. But we would be okay.

Many times before I’d felt cool drops and weighty hands upon my head. The first was the day of my endowment, when white-winged sisters whispered gentle yet potent words of cleansing and renewal, of unspeakable peace. That peace returned again and again under the hands of my husband giving blessings of light, truth, guidance and succor to each member of our growing family. And while my own hands sometimes longed to press against a child’s feverish scalp with ministering grace, and my mind often longed to understand why I must forbear, my periodic communion with the white-winged sisters was enough to sate the hunger.

*

The Relief Society sisters bowed their heads. Holding the bottle aloft, the Elders’ Quorum president consecrated the oil for the healing of the sick in the household of faith. Then he stepped aside as the Relief Society president lead a discussion about the purposes and practices of the priesthood. By the time she finished, the Elder’s Quorum president had poured the consecrated oil into dozens of small plastic vials—one for each woman in the room.

When the filled basket reached me I chose one of the golden vials, holding it for a few minutes before tucking it in my purse. My own oil. I could’ve called it pointless, since I couldn’t use it myself, and the priesthood brethren who could typically carried their own. I could’ve called it insulting to be offered a tool I was not entitled to wield. I could’ve used my rational mind to slice and dice the situation into a hundred sexist pieces if I wanted to.

But I didn’t want to. Sitting in the Relief Society room, surrounded by sisters holding bright vials of oil, I knew—in a fleeting yet enduring way—that I was holding a gift. One I could not open, true. But one I could rightfully own.

*

The streets of downtown Salt Lake were dark and damp from recent October rain. I stood on the corner of South Temple and Main with my daughter Christine, craning my neck to see if my husband’s car was in the stream of vehicles pouring from the direction of the conference center. Priesthood session had just ended, and so had the book-signing event I’d attended with Christine. Reed was due any minute to pick us up.

As we waited in the dark, damp night, clusters of men from the conference center crossed South Temple to reach the Trax platform. At first the crowds seemed familiar enough–bunches of heads and legs like those crossing any busy metropolitan street, except the heads of hair were all relatively close-shorn and the legs were all covered with dark suit pants and fluttering trenchcoat flaps. But as minutes passed and the conference center emptied, the procession gathered in strength and spectacle. Wearing the only skirts in sight, Christine and I watched in awe as the moving crowd of men, young and old, swelled from a steady stream to a mighty sea. Hundreds of priesthood holders, thousands, flowing outward from the center of the city to fill the dark, damp world.

*

On a warm spring afternoon I reached into my purse for my car keys, then quickly withdrew my hand in surprise: black ink, thick and sticky, covered my fingertips. Sighing in frustration, I dug for and found the offending pen—a cheap ballpoint that had leaked all over the contents of my purse. I lifted items out one by one, checking for damage. Thankfully my keys were untouched. But to my dismay, the vial of consecrated oil was ruined. Ink saturated the once-clear plastic casing, dripping from its small white cap.

I lifted the vial gingerly between thumb and forefinger. In the months I’d carried it with me it had never been used—at least, not for its express purpose. It was a comfort nonetheless, resting in my purse in case the need arose. A token of things precious to me–grandmother and Christ, breathing baby and white-winged sisters. And a daily reminder that while I couldn’t administer the blessings of the  priesthood, I could receive them in full, and carry them with me always.

I moved my hand toward the inky trash pile, reluctant to dispose of the blackened vial. Before dropping it I hesitated for a moment, imagining the glowing yellow oil inside, still clean and pure, still potent with potential. And it sobered me to realize how easily such beauty and value can be obscured, or abandoned, or lost.

# # #

Kathryn Lynard Soper is the author of the memoir The Year My Son and I Were Born (Globe Pequot Press, 2009) and the founder and editor-in-chief of Segullah. She contributes to Mormon forums on a variety of topics including gender issues, disability, mental health, sexuality, family life, and spirituality.

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You were wanted,
not an accident.

Your first fluttering cells
set plans pulsing—
names, knitting, nursery colors,
universities.

Though two others came before,
I saved a part for you.

Sometimes a heart stops beating
and dreams bleed free
in a slow, red river
of barren pain.

No healing prayers,
no reasons sought,
none given.
Just one of those things.

But it wasn’t an accident.
You were wanted
elsewhere.

# # #

Merrijane grew up in Bountiful, Utah. She earned a BA in English from BYU and then served a mission to Washington, D.C. After returning, she married Jason Rice. Together, they’re raising a family of four boys. She currently works for Deseret Mutual as a technical writer.

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