We Story

By D. K. McCutcheon

I read for 15 years without stopping

At 16 I woke to discover I’d never been kissed, and set out to find one

Through my terrible 20’s I wandered the world searching

At 32, on the exact opposite side of the planet, I found my kiss

He’d been reading, but looked up in the nick of time

At 37 we had a daughter. At 41 another.

At 50 we started thickening in inconvenient places

And thinning in worse ones (still we kiss, still we read)

And still we age

At 57 our youngest turns 16, stretches fingers out into the world, dreams her own explorations

Takes terrifying steps – and prepares to leave home

“I don’t read” she tells us firmly, absorbing stories from the ether in gulps

Regaling us with hilarious tales of tropes and memes

We watch our eldest also unfold like a lovely crumple-winged moth

Her trajectory metamorphosed

By the shiny-pretty-agonizing sparkles

Of the professional Migraineur

Every day in a dim room sound/taste/touch swap places in a slow, scintillating dance

Her unbearable transformation begins anew; inner-life ripe to bursting

More marvelous than our decades-round-the-world to find these girls

Each evolving far beyond their first fairy-tale flight

At 20 she reads without stopping

We talk about writing

She dreams with eyes wide open

Her point of view sparkling through painful shards

Of exquisite light

D. K. McCutchen is Senior Lecturer in The UMass College of Natural Sciences, and supports other writing teachers via the UMass Writing Program. She may be the longest-running member of the University Writing Committee. Lack of poetic-DNA led to a tale of low adventure & high science titled THE WHALE ROAD. In a literary attempt to save the world, she’s now writing gender-bender-post-apocalyptic-speculative fiction. She lives on a river with two brilliant daughters and a Kiwi, who isn’t green, but is fuzzy.

D. K. McCutchen

D.K. McCutchen’s speculative fiction trilogy includes Jellyfish Dreaming (Vol. 1, 2023) a Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize winner; Electric Ice (Vol. 2, 2024) Speculative Literature Foundation grant recipient, and “Plastic Eaters” (Vol. 3, in progress). D.K. teaches writing for the College of Natural Sciences, UMass, and is Associate Director of the Junior Year Writing program.