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Commentary on
“We’re Gonna Be All Right, Right?”

Sally Franco

Regarding her story “We’re Gonna Be All Right, Right?” the author writes:

Inspiration

The idea for Darcie’s story began with an image: a teenage mother in a snowstorm, her baby in the back seat, and a familiar landscape made unfamiliar. I wanted the scene to mirror her abrupt shift into adulthood where she suddenly has to take on new relationships, responsibilities, and conflicts right away, with no time to grieve what she’s lost. She’s left the house she grew up in and now lives among strangers. Graduation with her friends turns into something she watches from the sidelines. The future that once felt wide open narrows down to being a wife and a mother.

In the storm she learns the shape of adulthood: keep the car warm, keep the baby safe, keep yourself alive. And later, when the weather clears, she’ll realize that love and fear can exist simultaneously, and sometimes all you can do is face what comes next.

Challenges

One of the things I had to figure out was how to guide the reader through time. The story moves between memory and the present, so I worked to place small anchors, details of weather, sound, and setting, to keep orientation clear. Tone was the other challenge. I wanted the emotion to come through in gesture and reflection while avoiding too much description. That’s always a tough one. The snow did some of that work, muting the world while Darcie’s emotions stayed loud and heavy.

Leaving Space

I wanted the ending to reflect how life actually feels. In real life, as soon as we solve one problem, another shows up, so we leave Darcie at the moment new trouble shows itself. I also wanted to leave open space at the end so the reader gets to decide what comes next and how everything unfolds.

What Stays With Me

Many of us look back to our teens and the question of who we thought we’d become. I think of this as the “before time,” when the future felt open and every path was possible, and the “after time,” when one choice sends us down a road we can’t undo and all the other options fall away. It’s a thought that stays with me.

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Sally Franco’s short fiction has appeared in The Legacy and Short Édition. Texas-born and of Mexican descent, she has lived in New Mexico, Utah, and Vermont and often draws on her travels in Western and Eastern Europe.

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