By Siobhan McKenna
Welcome to the release of Yellow Arrow Publishing’s online series, Yellow Arrow Vignette. For our first issue we chose the theme of AWAKEN, our 2022 yearly value. We will publish the chosen AWAKEN pieces on Mondays and Wednesdays from today through September 5, ending with a heartfelt reading from our 2022 Vignette authors on September 7 at 8pm EST.
The theme AWAKEN had been on my mind frequently over the last four weeks as I’ve literally awakened each week in a different bed: an airbed in a friend’s townhouse in West Seattle, the guest mattress of my sister’s house in Jacksonville, Florida, the king-sized bed of an Airbnb on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and my childhood twin at my parent’s house in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
These various awakenings were necessary to attend several professional and family obligations between my partner and I, and although tiring at times, mainly I found myself exhilarated by the sensory experiences that accompanied waking up in a new place. I was awoken by the whimpering of my sister’s dog, a sweet Pitbull-Lab mix, as she pawed at the door and begged to snuggle in the early hours of the morning; the rumble of Lower East Side construction crews at work on the interminable projects of the city; and the rustle of deciduous leaves in a suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood as I left the sanctity of sleep and crossed the threshold into consciousness. These unconventional alarm clocks were a refreshing change to soothe my mind as often, I’ve felt a sense of dread when waking up in the morning. Sometimes when rousing for the day, the feeling of already being behind rushes in before the day has even started. Or simply, I am still tired, and sleep, precious sleep, is beckoning me back to the pillow.
As I moved from place to place, I realized that diversifying my surroundings helped me greet the day more energized as I was lured by the promise of experiencing for a few days how the “the other” lives, commutes, encounters nature, and is encapsulated by architecture. In Manhattan, I awoke and walked Second Avenue along city parks and graffiti-donned alleyways, with other millennials scrambling for coffee and free Wi-Fi. In Florida, my partner and I would ride beach cruisers after working from home to the sandy shores three blocks east to cool off in the Atlantic.
The constant movement stirred in me both the desire to create community and the hunger to continue jumping into the flow of another’s daily routine. For now, I need to keep channeling the traveler’s mindset as over the next six days I’ll be waking up in a different locale every day (because weekly changes weren’t enough of a challenge).
As this piece is published, I am in Canada driving to the northeast end of Vancouver Island. Once there, I’ll board a ferry to the border of British Columbia and Alaska and then hop on the Alaska-Canadian highway, the ALCAN, and start the 30+ hour drive to Anchorage, Alaska.
This journey to Alaska is one that I’ve been planning for a few years now. It started as a seed when I began travel nursing and realized the breadth of places I could explore. I was attracted to the land of the midnight sun for the unknown it possessed. The uninhabited lands, the frigid temperatures, and the native animals, but also the people. Through my travels, I have recognized that by living—not simply visiting—I can gain access to parts of another’s life that may go unnoticed when traveling as a tourist. I have appreciated that by simply being with others and understanding their histories, downfalls, and triumphs, we gain empathy. That for me meant experiencing, in flesh and blood, the 49th U.S. state.
I kept waiting for Alaska to work itself out for me. I applied to several jobs last year without hearing anything and then again, this year, I waited for the perfect travel nursing job to emerge. It didn’t happen. At first, I saw these rejections and “clung to that crag” of the known that Shikhandin, our first poet in the series whose work you will read today, writes about in “Epiphany.” I did not want to let go of the crag for fear of disappointment and for fear of not conforming to perceived social expectations. But, unlike last year, when I met a roadblock and decided fate wanted me elsewhere, this year, I chose to look beyond the standard contracts and assembled a hodgepodge of jobs that would keep me sustained when I lived in Anchorage. I began to release my “jam-jarred dream” that Shikhandin begs us to unleash.
While not all of us will have an awakening (or a desire, for that matter) to live in Alaska, awakenings arrive in countless forms. In this series, you will read about awakenings that come in the form of closure, death, the end of a marriage, the beginning of believing in yourself, acknowledging climate change, and so much more. Through these vignettes, our authors explore the thresholds where the unknown comes into light, an often vague and hazy transitional space that simultaneously intimidates and relieves our souls. As you travel alongside our authors, I hope that you can add these tender, joyous, and inspiring awakenings to the well of human experiences that each one of us holds in our core so that on days when we can’t recognize the other as ourselves, we may remember the universality of the human condition.
I am delighted with the themes that we explore in this series. Whether it’s spending a few months in unknown-to-you expanses or finding the courage to approach a new day with optimism, I hope this series awakens you to a “jam-jarred dream” that is desperate for you to release.
Thank you, Kapua Iao, our Editor-In-Chief, and Annie Marhefka, our Executive Director, for listening to my original pitch for an online publication and for helping me create this illuminating series. Thank you to the Yellow Arrow Publishing Board for their support on this endeavor. Thank you also to our wonderful editorial associate, Angela Firman, and the Yellow Arrow summer interns, Veronica Salib and Sydney Alexander, for diligently working on the edits and promotional material, and to our readers, Kapua, Annie, Angela, Veronica, and Sydney, along with board members Sara Palmer, Jessica Gregg, and Gina Strauss, and staff members Lisa Roscoe, Nicky Ruddell, and Andrea Stennett, who took the time to reflect on the over one hundred submissions we received. Thank you to everyone who submitted to the series and gave us the opportunity to read, commiserate, and empathize. We are also very grateful to Alex Marhefka for working on the website with us, helping us to explore a new boundary to share women’s voices. Finally, thank you to our writers who allowed us to find a home for their stories on our site. We are humbled.
Since January 2020, Siobhan McKenna has worked tirelessly for Yellow Arrow as an editorial associate and interviewer, among many other roles. She is now the Vignette Managing Editor. Siobhan earned her bachelor’s degree in creative writing and biology from Loyola University Maryland and a master’s degree in nursing from Johns Hopkins University. In addition to her work at Yellow Arrow, Siobhan is an ICU travel nurse and is currently located in Seattle, Washington. Her writing can be found throughout the Yellow Arrow blog, within our EMERGE zine, and with Next Level Nursing.
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