Sitting at the fountain, on a vinyl seat as hard and red as rock candy, I read aloud from the menu: Chocolate Sundae ... Banana Split ... My mother, her eyes still dilated from the drops, has her sunglasses on; with her floral hair scarf and lipstick as bright as cherries, she looks like a movie star. Apple Pie ... She stares ahead at the upside-down tulip glasses, the mint-green mixer rising like a rocket blaster, and smiles at every choice. Ice Cream Soda ... This is my reward for walking with her to Dr. Lee’s, for reading out street signs and warning her of buckled sidewalks and steep curbs, for listening as she tried to read the next row down in a voice as soft as a prayer. Then, always, the same wishes: I want to see him grow up... I want to see him graduate... Waiting for the waitress, I spin on the stool, lean my elbows on the gray formica counter, laugh at my odd reflection in the chrome napkin holder. When I look up at my mother, she’s watching me, her lips now pressed together. I see myself, small and far away in her dark glasses. I wonder what she sees.

eye chart
slowly the letters
turn into dreams

Rich Youmans

is the editor-in-chief of contemporary haibun online, and lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Alice. He has been writing haiku, haibun, and related essays for 35 years. His books include Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), co-written with Roberta Beary and Lew Watts; All the Windows Lit (Snapshot Press, 2017); and Head-On: Haibun Stories (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018), the latter of which received an honorable mention in the Haibun category of the Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡What’s Underneath, a haibun story by Rich Youmans in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 19, August 2023) which received a Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun in 2023

⚡Plaiting Poem & Prose: The Art of Braided Haibun, an essay by Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online (Issue 18:2, August 2022)

⚡ Three haibun stories by Rich Youmans in MacQ: Living Color and Redline in Issue 6 (January 2021); and Through the Looking Glass in Issue 9 (August 2021), the latter of which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon anthologies and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022)

⚡After the Dream, the Dream Remains, haibun story in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019) which was nominated for The Best Small Fictions 2020; piece was among 128 winners selected for publication in the anthology

⚡What’s Left Unsaid: Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory & Harriot West’s “Empty Spaces” in contemporary haibun online (16:3, December 2020)