Issue 119

It isn’t sight or sound or taste I’ve missed
the most—I’d been deprived of each before—
but routine, trusty touch, which we ignore
promiscuously:

The signs of where Esme had gone wrong, she thought, must have been there from the beginning—probably in primary colors. She wondered if burning the toast was where she’d gone wrong. Each mistake led to another, she thought, wishing she could be perfect.

First rain in the new house—
walls passed inspection, but
who knows? It’s hard to trust
in bricks. Aren’t they just cut-up

mud, lashed now by spray
from clotted gutters?

Twenty years ago, we brought the first child home. We held him, and the silence before us then was the deep, vast thrum of all we didn’t know. We were here, suddenly parents. The silence weighed down the air like boulders on silk. And then, of course, he cried.

When I go to the movies—well, when I go anywhere—Saint Augustine is always nearby. He lives in my head (and heart) rent free.