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for Fanny Howe

I traveled to Kalaupapa, the Hawaiian Settlement for People with Hansen’s Disease (also known as leprosy) as a way to reconcile being canceled. I wanted to bring myself intentionally and deeply into the experience of exile. Coming to this land was a way to begin healing, and to remake myself, my work, and my sense of place in the world.

This had once been the world’s largest confine for people with the disease. It was established in 1866 on an isolated peninsula along the coast of Molokai, one of the smallest of the Hawaiian Archipelago. It is still an active settlement, with the few remaining patients of those who chose to stay on after restrictions were lifted in 1969. They are quite elderly, and free from the disease that brought them here. They come and go as they like.

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Last December, Askold Melnyczuk invited me to contribute to his Arrowsmith Press Journal. “What do you want me to write about?” I asked. “Anything you like,” he said. This gift of freedom included a the talented Julia Juster, who helped coax this work out of me. It’s arrival coincides with the departure of the beloved Fanny Howe. The two of us helped each other live these past seven years, and this moment marks our shared progression in and out of fragility — me emerging from calamity, Fanny into her final physical decline. Now, as she goes one way and I go another, I feel us moving together, still, in spirit.

Here is my shadow cast by the light of a full moon as I stood alone one night on the pier at Kalaupapa. Click on the image to read the full essay.