On Collecting - Bethany Jarmul
Slimy, colorful leaves, like tree-fingers, cling full-bodied to the damp, dark wooden deck. Asher, my two-year-old son, peels one off like the Band-Aid on his finger.
He, toddler-amazed, carries the wet, paper-bag leaf inside, layering it on the window sill like paper-mâché—reminding me of the paper-mâché doll that I made in elementary school, kept in a box underneath my bed alongside skeleton keys, pyrite, rose quartz, and arrowheads, foreign currency, and journals of gel-pen thoughts.
Asher returns, chooses burning embers, emeralds, blazes, brown swirls of rot—in partially-eaten and mostly-eaten-leaf shapes.
“Look leafs, Mama!” He holds them up for me to inspect, admire, or reject—the same way that, before he was conceived, I held up the pregnancy tests, squinting, heart full of hummingbirds. When I found my two-lined test, I kept it in my nightstand drawer, brought it out to admire it like a four-leafed clover.
“Yes, leaves, baby.” I hold my phone to capture him, to crystallize this moment, to lock it away in my memory museum, encapsulate billions of atoms with the imprint of my finger on the glowing glass.
I am a collector of memories, tucking them into my pockets, behind my ears. Sometimes I use photographs as memory-traps; more often I wrangle them with words.
Like a leaf that dries between the pages of the family Bible, or in wax paper, or behind plastic in a scrapbook—pressed until it becomes a flaky, paper-thin wafer—so the moments get compressed, transformed, pasted onto construction paper, painted over with finger paints or traced with stencils, and hung from the fridge where the sun fades them.
With written words, I make meaning of the memory, transform it. I try to taxidermy time. But a moose head hung on a wall does little to showcase its swift trot, solitary soul, summertime swims in the cold stream.
“I want more leafs, Mama.”
“Here’s a yellow one.” I point with my toe.
“No, I want—green one.” He grabs my hand, pulls me to the edge of the deck where a maple tree’s branch hangs, bursting with buds, leaflets, broad leaves all bottle green.
Chlorophyll, the leaves' green pigment, captures light transferring it to energy-storing molecules. Like chlorophyll, my words can capture, reveal in-color truths. And even in the deterioration, the breaking down of chlorophyll, of fact—vibrancy is revealed—burnt orange, ruby red, and glittering gold hues.
I pluck a handful of the leaves for Asher. He uses them as blankets, shields, curtains—to hide his toy cars. Then, he pulls the leaves away one-at-a-time, revealing his tiny treasures beneath, squealing with delight.
In my writing, I cover up then uncover, rearrange then reveal, find delight in grasping memories—frosting smeared on my son’s face, the roar of Niagara Falls, the tickles from my husband’s beard—as they float toward the ground. But I also peel up the slimy ones—the unwanted touch, a friend’s suicide, religion-fueled shame—and give these memories a home on a sunny windowsill, a place for their crinkly, rotting selves in my collection.
Previously Published by Identity Theory, December 2022
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks and one poetry collection—This Strange and Wonderful Existence (poetry chapbook, Bottlecap Press, 2023), Take Me Home (nonfiction chapbook, Belle Point Press, 2024), and Lightning is a Mother (poetry collection, ELJ Editions, 2025). Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul
