– What was I doing here? I’d been a fool to come.

Too much of the past haunted the rooms.

Bruce Spang, former Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine, is the author of two novels, The Deception of the Thrush and Those Close Beside Me. His most recent collection of poems, All You’ll Derive: A Caregiver’s Journey, was just published. He is the poetry and fiction editor of the Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. He teaches courses in fiction and poetry at Great Smokies Writing Program at University of North Carolina in Asheville and lives in Candler, NC with his husband Myles Rightmire and their five dogs, five fish, and thirty birds.