The Songs She Never Gave Him

In the Appalachian highlands, the year a daughter is born, her mama brews seven jars of cider.

When the girl comes of marrying age, she opens one jar a year, waiting for the man she loves.

If all seven are emptied and she still isn't wed, the jars get smashed, and she waits no more in this life.

The first six, I drank alone.

Because every year, Luke Weiss said: not this year.

He was a musician who'd come to our town to collect the old heritage folk songs, and he stayed three years.

I taught him to sing the old mountain harmonies. He taught me to record sound on a phone.