CHURCH DIRECTORY

They must have felt betrayed, like when they replace

the actor playing your favorite TV character on a show

you’ve watched forever. That’s not her, said

with raised eyebrows and emphasized pitch.

Or it could just be me, projecting onto the page

of our glossy new color church directory. Our family

of five squeezed in the square, and I in the space

beside him, a place she held for twenty years.

Most in the new Bethel Methodist Directory

had been to her funeral and wondered now

about their boys, with cued smiles and absent

gazes. The Fergusons, framed on the page beside

our photo to the right, seemed to have something

they wanted to say, beads of sweat on his upper lip

and her spine stick-straight. On the other side

were the Dreslers. Their girls, in smocked collars

and matching hair bows, stood in front of their parents.

Karen sending a distinct side-eye, and Rob, resigned.

Their favorite actor wasn’t supposed to be written

out of the script. And this new one, unknown.

---

Ellis Elliott is a writer, ballet teacher, and facilitator for online writing groups called Bewilderness Writing. She has a blended family of six grown sons and lives in Juno Beach, FL.  Her first chapbook, Break in the Field, was a finalist for the Two Sylvia’s Press Wilder Poetry Book Prize, and was published in July, 2023, with Devil’s Party Press.