Litany

While I still remember, the color of the snow before me while behind me on the high ridge, fire sings through the dry timber at dawn, driving us down to the river.

Hopscotch for the Blind

When our favorite couple decided to marry and chose for their date a Saturday in July already charged with bright significance, we had to insist, they couldn’t have it.

Girl for Sale

Neighbors and strangers are holding bits of my childhood up to the sunlight, the better to judge them. Mom and I have arranged the tables in loose chronological order; attentive shoppers moving clockwise will see my unformed adolescent self unfold into hopeful young womanhood over there by the plum tree.

Shapes in the Blue

We were twelve and stupid, American kids living in America, lying on our backs at recess. You like that? We lay on our backs side by side in the sun, in the grass, full of youth, looking for shapes in the clouds.

Baby’s Empty Bed

The humid summer heat was murderous. Every year one or two were killed in our town, cooked in their rooms. At our house on the avenue, a fan in the attic drew refreshment from the night through our open bedroom windows and pulled the hot air up the attic stairs.

Movie Night

The room is dark and smells of disinfected pee with a hint of vanilla. Eleanor Barney must be here. Most of us have been wheeled into places and parked facing the screen but younger people with red ears are crowded onto folding chairs, noisy with outdoor talk, coats in their laps.

Alphabet Soup

I don’t know this man across the table but if we’re dating, I’m a reasonably lucky woman, depending on my age, my looks. I don’t know much. A plate of eggs and bacon before him, scrambled soft, I believe they call it and nearby, toast in uneven stacks, so the meal is underway. Is this breakfast?

Some Hug

Two inches in any direction would topple the whole apparatus. But don’t think. Don’t think for godssake don’t talk, embrace the hug. Two inches along the plane defined by the circle of the horizon in any direction, if you must. But stop.

Shoes Like Mirrors

At age six, we are wiser than at any other age. We know things nobody could have told us and we keep them to ourselves. Before I forget everything forever, shall I tell you what it was like for me that day? You know what it did to my sisters.

Box of Ice

My friend Bergelson kept his past in a box for fifty years. Now he’s not making new memories, he doesn’t know what year it is, and the box is where he wakes up unable to breathe. They’re very respectful here about numbers and names.