Cat Newton

That Fall and That Rise

I don’t remember what we talked about during the drive through the mountains.

I don’t remember if I turned on the radio, if we stopped for coffee, if I made you cry.

But I remember the turbines, the hundreds, thousands of them, rotating in the valley below.

I locked my eyes to their blades, to their falling and rising and falling and rising,

as they pirouetted from earth to sky and back again. I focused so hard on their rotations

that all these years later when I remember that day, they’re all I see.

Even now it’s easier to remember the turbines then to hate myself for not telling you

that it would be okay, that I would be, and so would we.

So I remember that fall and that rise instead of thinking of you, of how I made you feel alone

when I was sitting right there, close enough to hold your hand.


Cat Newton is a native New Yorker who studied literary nonfiction at Columbia University. She spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about writing, and sometimes even succeeds in doing it.