by Megan Savage
Nanako, the art of punching soft metal
to create decorative domes, roughly
translates to “fish roe.”
Something in the meaning is left out, an absence
like the difference between challah and brioche,
or my cousin Jenny’s egg bread,
which we made to raise good thoughts
for her liver transplant.
Absent one liver, my aunt was scattered
in the channel between England and France,
the wind so high, the ashes blew back
into the faces of her family, which is funny
now in retrospect.
Sometimes things mark us
and we don’t even know,
like the way I always forget my freckles
until that one sun-soaked day in summer
when they are born.
Megan Savage is a multi-genre writer living in Portland, Oregon with a beloved dog, Fig. Recent work can be found in Sixth Finch; the Routledge anthology, Pandemic of Perspectives: Creative Re-Imaginings; Hunger Mountain; and FE Magazine from Fonograf Editions. She holds an MFA in fiction from Indiana University and teaches at Portland Community College, where she helps coordinate the Carolyn Moore House, the first and only writing residency housed at a community college.