On one of the musty cardboard boxes Betsy hauls from a dark corner of her mother’s attic, she’s surprised to find her own handwriting in large letters: “My Baby Dolls.” She’d forgotten. She packed them when she was in high school, was painting her room, putting up tea lights and posters. She got rid of her toys and picture books back then, but of course she saved the dolls. Of course.

She opens the box right there under the flickering bulb. A tenderness comes over her as she unwraps each doll from its tissue paper, smooths its little dress or pastel-colored bunting, and lays it gently on the floor.

Of the four of them, her favorite was the one she named Jessica, which she now lifts as she always did back then: supporting its head, bringing it to her shoulder, patting its back. For a long while, she kneels there in the dim-lit mess, cheek on Jessica’s nylon hair, absently staring out the grimy window. She remembers how she and her brother played up here for hours, building forts and foreign worlds, how their mother never cautioned them against the grit and nails and mice, how they trusted her back then, not knowing that her quirkiness would become what others called delusions. Though their dad had long since flown, life still felt mostly kind.

Something startles Betsy from her thoughts, but she can’t say what. A movement? A soft scuttling somewhere in the shadows? She shakes her head. She’s been hearing things lately, taps and hums mixed in with the constant buzzing drone of her tinnitus. Even snatches of song, or whisperings of almost-words. It is, of course, the stress: her brother’s funeral, her own divorce after a mere two years, her yearning for a child of her own instead of the increasing demands of her mother’s care. Even the low light of these December days has thrown her off. Winter always played mean games with her moods, but lately she’s felt foggy, tired, can’t seem to get things done. This morning, she’d set herself a single task: just bring the boxes down and out the door. She had thought she’d easily throw these old forgotten things away. But now: her child-self, Baby Jessica. This swell of memories.

And now: another tiny sound. Another movement, this time against her chest. She jerks Jessica away from her body. The little face startles. The eyes blink and stare.

Jennifer L. Freed’s

is the author of When Light Shifts: A Memoir in Poems, a finalist for the 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton book prize. In the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, her memoir received three distinctions: finalist for the Medal Provocateur, second place for Legacy Non-fiction, and Grand Prize short list. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, Rust and Moth, Sheila-na-Gig, Vox Populi, What the House Knows, and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She writes, teaches, and facilitates workshops from Massachusetts.

Author’s website: https://jfreed.weebly.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Gravity, Ms. Freed’s first haibun, published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 28, April 2025)

⚡ Six Words in an Ellen Bass Poem Take Me Back To My Brother’s Hospital Room in Atlanta Review (Spring/Summer 2025)

⚡ List of Publications at the author’s website