Plums - Necessary Salt by Joy Sullivan

This month, we’ve been writing and studying lyrical essays in my writing community, Sustenance. I’ll share some prompts with you all next week, but below is a recent mini-essay of mine on the bruisable nature of memory, stone fruit, and thin-skinned hearts. Upgrade to paid Plums I worry that childhood has been hard on you—in a way that will make it blur together. A smudge instead of a shape. The way spilled water spoils a painting. I worry I won’t be true memory, only disruption. A year where a woman insisted you clean your face and bought you books and practiced your months with you. How she stood in the kitchen, where your mother might have stood, and handed you plums. You’re not mine. But I wanted you to know what it was like to have a mama in your house— in the hours it mattered. The lonely stretch of afternoon or late at night. When the school mornings came, heavy with terror, I wanted you to wake to a woman stirring in the other room. Her little sounds, a comfort. I know you hav

This month, we’ve been writing and studying lyrical essays in my writing community, Sustenance. I’ll share some prompts with you all next week, but below is a recent mini-essay of mine on the bruisable nature of memory, stone fruit, and thin-skinned hearts. Upgrade to paid Plums I worry that childhood has been hard on you—in a way that will make it blur together. A smudge instead of a shape. The way spilled water spoils a painting. I worry I won’t be true memory, only disruption. A year where a woman insisted you clean your face and bought you books and practiced your months with you. How she