ANASTASIA DOTZAUER

St. Dorothy in February

On Friday, she filled our shoes with sand. Soil, she said, but it was sand. The grains shifted in on themselves, hymned in their leather pews. Our boots were filled with bone meal. Aromas of morning and manual labor hallelujah’d from the soles. Food, she said, but it was bone. Empty sacks of compost and fertilizer covered our floors, crawled up our walls. Silhouettes of quiet seeds shaded our windows, sun singing through the gaps. She sermoned them for hours, her voice thawing them through prayer. Stems and stalks of lipped orchids, bloomed azaleas, whorled gardenias networked in the liturgy of our living room. Our ceiling left us. Snow spread the word. Smiling, she trimmed the slippers off my feet, spreading them evenly between the shoe-pots, claiming, Seeds, but they were slippers. By Monday, valances of color framed every corner of our house. How will I work? I asked. How will the children get to school? She pointed from the pulpit of our kitchen table to a silt trail. Pristine sneakers, boots, sandals, and slippers were walking out the door in pairs.


ANASTASIA DOTZAUER holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Weber State University. She currently works in marketing and is aiming for a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. She plans to incorporate art and writing into therapy for trauma patients. This is the first time her work has appeared in a national literary journal.