Fur constellating on the fitted sheet.
The skirt of the sky is pink. A squirrel leaps
in the dark part of the sky, the dog barks,
from the limb on this side to the other.
A squirrel does not fall. Shush, boy.
The dog sinks. The dog,
who was blocking the kaleidoscopic sky, folds.
Kaleidoscopic: the winter trees fragment the air,
but our bodies are blanket curves.
The dog unfurls: the squirrel is back to our snow, his snow.
jake: what would you put in your time capsule?
jack: what is it?
jake: it’s when you’re a kid and you bury something with treasures in it and then when you’re like twenty you dig it out.
jack: bury it in what.
jake: in a lunchbox.
jack: i know i always treasure my stuffed animals.
I hear story after story: parents who didn’t notice a six year old’s pattern of sloppiness and frustration until a first grade teacher suggested occupational therapy; parents who didn’t hear their seven year old’s lisp until the child himself pointed it out and asked for help; a family who hadn’t a hint that their middle daughter was throwing up after every meal until the plumber explained that’s why the pipes had corroded; an ADHD diagnosis after years of parents telling their child she could do better if she’d just put her mind to it.
…
One of my most haunting memories is of back when my older son was seven and he hurt his leg on the playground. It wasn’t swollen or discolored. I full out accused him of milking a minor hurt. I even insisted that he walk on it. When I took him for x-rays 24 hours later, the films showed a god-awful fracture. Looking at them I was flattened by one thought: If he was in that much pain, how come I didn’t feel it?
Motherlode, Lisa Belkin, New York Times Magazine
Not too long ago, there was a report of graffiti in the bathroom at the high school. The culprit was a girl, and what she had written, over and over, was: I Miss My Dad.
And the prayers: from simple pleas to the heavens to the Lord’s Prayer, only halfway completed when the jet began to swim.
“beers in the shadow of a cathedral brewed by monks”
(by nigel peake)
