She came from a family of fast talkers, but her mind moved faster than her tongue. She was quick to the heart of a matter, quick to sympathize, quick to draw conclusions but quicker to draw, pencil scratching faster than words could form. She thought in cartoons, thought in word balloons; words slowed as they left her mouth, arrived late, fell into conversations out of sync. She misspoke, miscued, was late to the punchline, missed the boat but missed the harbor more. Spent years searching her purpose, college, marriage, family, writing—hundreds, thousands, millions of words, newsletters, blogs, brochures¬—till she no longer had to. Till words billowed out of her in pictures, rendered sunsets in pastel, cloud banks in charcoal, etched sadness and hope onto shorelines in ink.
Cora McCann Liderbach is a poet from Lakewood, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Impostor Literary Journal, The Broadkill Review and other publicaitons, and has been featured in the Cleveland Humanities Festival. She was a finalist in Gordon Square Review’s 2022 Contest for Ohio Writers.
