A Beloved Fire Becomes the House: haibun of Kat Lehmann

Description

“Kat Lehmann has produced a brave and brutally honest masterpiece, dedicated to “anyone who believed they lived a normal life until they shared their story.” This is her story. Read it.”
— Lew Watts (co-author, Haibun: A Writer’s Guide)

Revelations

I climb uncertain mountains of stacked boxes to search for photos or anything worth saving before it succumbs to the elements. This time I find the blue suitcase. The one we took each year to the Jersey Shore.

undertow

The suitcase is stuffed with black and white composition notebooks, the type used for school-work. I open the first notebook. It contains long lists of license plate numbers from cars that are following her. The exact time and details of every person, vehicle, and sound outside her door. Alongside the lists are conversations with Cat Stevens. He offers to pay her trillions of dollars for her brooch. I open another book. She is

overtaking

the center of an ornate underworld scheme. Secret agents within the walls track her movements with microphones and other spy devices. Mobsters monitor her everywhere she goes, and only she knows their true identities. Woven into the plots are the names of former neighbors, celebrities, old boyfriends, and doctors from the hospital where she used to work. There are

mother writes

dozens of notebooks, the suitcase brimming. My full name is written hundreds of times, the victim of unspeakable violations.

another rape

My father’s name is written too, a kingpin of darkness. Everyone she has ever known or seen plays a sordid role detailed in this opera. Treasons come to her coded in crossword puzzles and amplified from ceiling vents. Other notebooks contain prophecies she says God whispered in her ear. Through her cunning, she, alone, remains protected from the conspiracies that spiral around her. She defeats them all, the sole bearer of truth and goodness.

that never was

The notebooks are dated like journals with hourly updates, written in her familiar handwriting. Every word in blue ink and underlined twice in red. Every. Word. The first book is dated the year I graduated from college. In my hands, I have proof for every-thing I had ever suspected about my mother. I no longer require the witness of a sibling. I can hold her testimony directly in my hands. Then it hits me — how terrifying it must be, to be her.

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ISBN: 978-1-958408-92-6
Pages: 144
Size: 6″ x 9″
Binding: perfect softbound
Year Published: 2026