hazel witham

 Check out my essay “The Storm Between Us” in the newest issue of Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2009. 

Excerpt: 

I travel to Galveston to know my grandmother. I drive along the southeastern jaw of Texas, passing through towns named Cheek and Winnie until I veer onto the road that will take me to the Gulf. I stare at the green land under a gray morning until the horizon disappears and I steer into the past.

            My grandmother died six years before I was born. She never knew it, but she left me her old-fashioned name—Hazel—and an old-fashioned rose-cut diamond that became my engagement ring. She also left me an unfortunate sliver of DNA that has me traveling this two-lane road to Galveston.

            Green marshland swims in the foreground. Silver slips of water roll away from the road and fade into a blur of mist. Oil derricks emerge, bowing their heads to the earth like horses wetting their lips at the trough. A line I cannot define is somewhere in the distance and I feel her gathering within me.

This excerpt from my memoir was first published in Two Hawks Quarterly in November 2007. You can read it at http://aulapress.com/2007/11/03/hazel-kite-witham-visiting-hours/.

By Hazel Kight Witham

Throughout the night the cold curls my six-year-old self tight into a ball, high in the loft of the barn. The barrel stove my father built is stoked to capacity before we go to bed, but the heat dissipates by morning, and my dreams become frosty as sunrise approaches. Snuggled under thick scratchy Mexican blankets, I am tucked like a nesting bird in these old wooden rafters. Continue reading

By Hazel Kight Witham

The seagulls are floating on the sea air above the fishermen who line the pier with empty eyes, next to empty coolers. The child is sitting on the concrete bench, dangling his legs, small red shoes untied.

A loud clap of thunder erupts behind the mountains and a shudder courses through the colony of gulls, grey and white flashes of winged exclamation points scratching the sky. Continue reading