At first: under table when he explodes, on windowsill when her eyes blank.
(Fold up in corner of closet at chorus of slamming doors.)
The week in bed with chicken pox: drab woolen army blanket, wrinkled sheet,
her fringed chenille coverlet, thick with her smell.
(The line-dried sheet smelling of sky.)
As lower leg blisters from spaghetti water spill:
bite lip, offer up pain to God for sins.
(Think of next week, next month, next year, when twenty-one . . .)
But then: Broadway cast albums: Funny Girl, Oliver!, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls.
(Every word, every song. As if on stage.)
Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire?
(Astaire. No, Kelly. NO, definitely Astaire.)
Nancy Drew then Tolkien then Tolstoy then Eliot then Austen then Dostoevsky.
(Always another book to eat.)
From My Crooked House
By Teresa Carson
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