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August 3, 2026

everything I know about my mother's hometown

Jen Hallaman

  1. to reach my mother’s hometown from my hometown, it takes 2.5 hours by car on a crooked highway carved out of sprawling shale
    1. by carved, I mean blown apart with dynamite
    2. look closely and you’ll see the hillsides shudder
  2. you’ll know you are there when you see shore butting up against a muddy river
    1. my grandfather once swam across the river
      1. I do not know how old he was, or whether he was drunk
      2. I do not know whether he was scared, how forcefully the river’s currents flowed, or how long he was suspended between shores
    2. it only takes a minute to cross the river via bridge
      1. I used to imagine the green-tinged metal crumbling beneath us, our car plunging into the river
        1. Once or twice, I dreamed about it
        2. Assuming we escape the car, I think I could make it to the riverbank
  3. the front porch of the house where my grandparents once lived has disintegrated, leaving a chasm between the door and the overgrown yard
    1. last time I paused by the yard, the crabgrass climbed to my knees
      1. once, the lawn was dotted with pink and yellow and violet
      2. I think there was a tire swing hanging from that tree
    2. I want to drive by once more to see what I can remember
      1. maybe park and stand on the fringes of the sidewalk. see what memory occurs to me.
        1. thus far, haven’t been able to bear
  4. nothing here ever changes except the buildings and the people grow older
    1. there is the porn mart off of the highway. the CVS, the Wendy’s
    2. my grandma’s favorite donut shop
    3. the near-vacant mall where we bought back-to-school clothes
  5. my aunt replants her garden each year
    1. what is the point of growing a garden in a dying city?
    2. my daughter teeters from flower bed to flower bed, picking me zinnias, daffodils, pansies
      1. I leave the flowers on the patio overnight and by morning they are wilted
        1. Should have pressed them or hung them up to dry
          1. like the sun could bake my water-thin memory into these paper petals
          2. like I could hold this day in my palm
  6. walking northeast from my aunt’s house, everything is familiar but I don’t know where I’m going
    1. the sidewalk ends
      1. I can’t see where it picks up again
    2. the yards are dotted with yellow and white and violet
  7. My grandparents are buried side by side somewhere in this town, but I don’t know where their graves lie
  8. I used to press the flowers that I plucked from my grandmother’s yard
    1. as though she, too, had grown from that soil &
      1. I might be able to keep her
    2. sometimes I happen upon one in an old book: Heidi, Little House on the Prairie
      1. I leave them there for fear they’ll disintegrate at my touch
    3.  I thought I’d remember the day each flower came from
      1. but the days I spent here mostly blur together
        1. what is the name for a place that you can only access in memories or dreams?

Jen Hallaman lives in Cleveland, Ohio with her husband, daughter, and two twenty-pound cats. She works at an independent bookstore, where she spends her lunch break writing poems. Her creative work appears in the New Orleans Review, Pithead Chapel, DIAGRAM, SWING, and Orange Blossom Review, among other publications. Find her at www.jenhallaman.com.