Rescue Work

I’m a matter-of-fact girl in a clerical collar with a few things of value to share. One, it’s good to share. Two, everybody has value. I can’t explain death or the consequences it casts backward into our lives or forward onto our survivors but I’ve measured some of those shadows where I live.

Trashpicker

I spend the week wondering what I can do for him, not just unload but bestow on him to brighten his prospects without, I admit, ever wanting his hopes to glow more brightly than mine and yet, I want him to be happier to receive than I am to relinquish whatever item I halfway hide in the piles of trash by the curb.

The Purpose

I turned thirty in here, I turned forty in here, now I’m fifty and there’s very little chance you’ll let me out, I know that. What purpose does this serve? At least I’m not at large in the world, I guess you’d say. You should only know what’s at large in the world.

Full Body Massage

He will be more difficult to satisfy than a man who only thinks he is a bull. That is Sunny’s opinion and she’s an expert. I keep my opinion to myself. I’ve not been in this country long enough to speak. With my diary, though, I’m fearless, and in my dreams, I revel in inexcusable deeds.

Something Like Mercy

The box is richly padded and, for one who won’t be stirring, roomy. I should have lived as comfortably, in darkness as conducive to long remembering. This is no way to begin. I am paper and bone in a box under earth as blunt as a clod. My words should be simple as sand.

Life Line

—Do you plan to tell the doctor all my secrets?
—She won’t be testing for secrets.
—Suppose I tell her yours?
—You don’t remember them.
—That’s not fair.
—No.

Confinement

Just as the rich man has nothing and no man who has never lived in prison can be free, my jailers were wrong to promise me solitary when the fertile air all around must vibrate with songs

Freeing the Cats

The tiniest fang-like tooth, which, every time it has settled against the stop inside the lock, has kept the bolt from sliding free from the jamb of the big cat cage, had been misaligned from the start and, weakened by thousands of abuses, finally snapped.

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.

The Paperboy

He climbs the same hill every day and, until there’s a day without news, the papers will keep on coming. At his age, he already knows to come down hard one foot at a time and press his whole weight onto that pedal, to lean his body over the basket, and look uphill, and swing his ropy shoulders above the handlebars and lead with his head forward, to overbalance the load that loves the ground and the machine that wants to roll backwards.