The Man on the Front Porch Has a Question

by Janna Miller

One hundred five years of sepia light across the wooden frame and she did not leave her rocking chair. You know, she said, I was born a slave. More than a century ago and I do not leave my chair.  They lifted her with gentle Black hands on the curved runners and armrests as smooth as skin. Cradled her ancient body. No one could imagine how she grew and lived within for so long. Her chair and a slip of herself and all the life that chair contained. The visitor man with his clipboard on her porch asked would she like to vote, and she said I do not leave my chair and she didn’t. Carried to the flatbed of a new Dodge truck, steadied with awe and help, driving slow as the years must feel, she did not leave her chair. A century between entrapment and her life and her porch and the throne of rocking and living and connecting one world and the next. Up the courthouse steps, she ascended in wood and paint and her clothes, her own skin. 

Carried. Steady as the century she contained, her throne, her wood and bones, her voice. Her vote.

About the author

Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Shenandoah, Whale Road Review, Citron Review, Best Microfiction 2023, and others. Her story collection, All Lovers Burn at the End of the World, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in late 2024. Generally, if the toaster blows up, it is not her fault. 

About the illustration

The illustration is "Dinah", a photograph by Grant Castner. Milford, New Jersey, 1898. In the collection of the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey.