by Erica S. Arkin

 
As he rowed out past the breakers, Papa told me fishing would soothe him the same way donating all the unused baby clothes had soothed Mama. After an hour of bobbing up and down, he said that the motion is what makes you right again. I asked if that was why Mama wouldn’t leave the rocking chair.
 

Erica S. Arkin received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston, MA and teaches writing at Bentley University. She is currently working on a collection of linked short stories that map an American family’s struggle to reconcile its complex and often volatile Northern Irish heritage.