TELEPHONE OF THE TREE

The sudden loss of her closest friend leaves a child clinging desperately to memories and connections.

Deep in denial, Ayla is sure that though her lifelong bestie “went away,” Kiri (who used they/them pronouns) will be back in time for their 11th birthday. But, as gradually becomes clear, “went away” means more than just a temporary absence. Cast in half-page prose poems, this grief journal sensitively tracks Ayla’s hard progress from “Kiri left” to an acknowledgment of what really happened to Kiri and, past that, to a tentative understanding that Kiri will always be present in the negative spaces that, as in a drawing, make everything else “full of color and shape and life.” Rather than trot in a therapist or some other mouthpiece for wise counseling, the author gives her protagonist subtler (and more believably effective) help reaching that insight—most notably parents who give her space rather than unwanted advice, and her grandfather’s old telephone. Placed in the tree that was planted at her birth, the phone draws passersby to make therapeutic “calls” to missed family members, including (by one 5-year-old scene stealer) a beloved deceased pet. Readers feeling Ayla’s profound sense of loss will be relieved when she finds a way to live with it. Physical descriptions are minimal, but hints in the text suggest that Ayla and her family are people of color.

Raw and sad but lit with occasional glints of humor and ending, as it should, on a rising note.