THE MIRROR OF SIMPLE SOULS
I do not like old water.
The water in the ocean is old
The lake is old
But maybe it’s not
Subject to the logic of time, of old and new.
Water.
Because in the kitchen, it’s difficult to lie
Because the yearbook photo shows long straight hair parted down the middle, Marcia Brady-style
Because in my son’s mind, he has only one dziadek & babcia & that blindspot diminishes me more each day
The earliest, from my brother (June 2007) was twelve seconds long: “Hi, it’s me—aww, fucking-A!—Hi, it’s me, call later, I guess.”
Then the first day of August 2007, twenty seconds: “Hi Amanda, this is Ollie, I just saw the news a bridge fell down in Minneapolis—I hope you weren’t on it. I guess that’s why I’m calling. I’ll try you later. Okay, love you, bye.” I was working at the café when I missed the call.
The road where I lived went in a circle. Inside the road circle was a circle of grass. Inside the circle of grass was the matter I looked through And looked at, waiting for whatever moved in from the edges And came together in the middle of the circle.
heirloom hairline sugar lips what’s up gas lit you’re holding the match dirty mattress book rhythms
No one could remember when the hole appeared. Some thought it had opened overnight—spontaneously, like a weather event or an idea—while everyone was sleeping. Others claimed the hole had always been there, but small and shallow enough that no one noticed it. Only as it widened and deepened over time had it taken shape in the village consciousness. Whatever the case, since the hole emerged at the center of town, where everyone went and everything happened, it became impossible to ignore.
Not in a place considered a place. Farther out. On the road nowhere. Where a place had been. There was a smokestack. Not a place on the map. To get there, keep going. Kept going and missed it. Missed it but kept going. There was a water tower not considered a water tower. In a place once considered a place.
Truth is asphalt—you, too, should wait for it to cool, as slabs of it can and do get personalityish.
