This is my first attempt at the "braided essay" and my first creative writing assignment in my MFA program. A braided essay is a type of personal essay which is poetic in form and takes two or more thematic strands and weaves them together. Much like a poem, there is a level of "vagueness" which invites the reader into the work to question, interpret, and imagine. Any comments would, of course, be appreciated. Critiques welcome.

Full Circle

1.

The memory is an old film reel. 
            Dusty. 
            Pock-marked. 

My four-year-old body was stripped to skin before they entered the bathroom.
They have no face.
I hid beneath the countertop where we kept the waste basket, crouched between the 
  toilet and the plumbing for the sink.

“Please don’t.”

2.

	A house is wood paneling or brick and mortar or at the very least tin. 
	
	A home is a safe haven, a place where love flows and boundaries are respected.

		I grew up in a house.


3.

	My two-year-old sister, Eliza, lay in a heap on the worn sofa on the far right side  of the living room near the fireplace my father hand-crafted with his own calloused hands. Her gums were so swollen with thrush that only the very bottom ridges of her teeth shone through.

	She flailed in and out of consciousness.

	My mother administered morphine through a central line that erupted like a rubber tentacle from her chest.

	When she finally gave in to death, finally exhaled her last young breath, and the arrangements were made, I stood tall in the balcony of St. Phillip’s Catholic Church and played Greensleeves on my flute as I peered down at her small, white casket.