A Curious Moon

By M. Atchleross

It sits on the right side of my chin, as it always has, as it does in every rendering of me in dear friends’ dreams. Those who once cupped my face and closed the space may revisit me in memory where time waters me down, but what sits on the right side of my chin anchors.

When I dwell on distinction, I remind myself it is but a rain chain; someone in my bloodline carried this too. Were they a painter of self-portraits, spreading the speck across the isle and through the hinterlands on foot, on horseback, on boat? It is our nature to think first of grand proliferation. Perhaps, more realistically, they charted movements of tiny dots through microscopes by day and telescopes by night, adding nothing beyond a steady stream of curiosity to the research. An explorer, all the same.

When first told what sits on the right side of my chin is an oddity, I was young enough to not have memorized my features but old enough to start tracing without drawing notice. I stopped dreaming only of colors—soon there were people knocking on white doors and speaking sense into every room. A simple incision, the doctor said, and a diagonal scar would sit in its place. Faced with a line in the sand, I never once considered ridding myself of what sits on the right side of my chin again.

Maggie is a Richmond, Virginia-based writer, photographer, and appreciator of well-preserved mid-century modern homes. Of her writing, one could say she’s taken after her land surveyor father, as her work also seeks to translate Virginia vignettes. While he uses his logbook for scribbling angles from control points to the corners of Albemarle county houses, Maggie uses hers for documenting the surviving shadows cast by our architecture, primarily those long demolished.

Maggie’s pen name (M. Atchleross) is a fusion of her grandmothers’ maiden names, Atchley and Cross. Both of whom called the Commonwealth home.