The Fox at Dawn

“The silence after was nothing like the silence before.”

     -Chelyen Davis

This line is from “Wellness Check” a chilling short story published in the 2024 winter issue of Untelling. Its ending has stuck with me a long time. That devastating silence.  I met Chelyen at Hindman years ago. I don’t even know how many workshops and retreats we have attended together. Lord, the stories we’ve told and listened to late in the night on the porch or in the living room of Stuckey. We lived through that unimaginable flood there in 2022 when Troublesome Creek rose 21 feet in just a few hours in the middle of the night sweeping lives and trees and cars and homes away. It changed us all. Shared disaster turns acquaintances into kin. 

Chelyen is a former journalist and speech writer for the governor of Virginia. Her work has been published in Appachian Review, Still: The Journal and The Botter Southerner, among other places. You can read three of the poems she wrote about the flood in Melissa Helton’s gorgeous anthology Troublesome Rising:

http://hindman.org/fireside/titles/troublesome-rising/troublesome-rising-digital-anthology/red-carpet-chelyen-davis/

My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness. 

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