haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

Sand Lake

Font size closes in on blushing just before the trees
go dark. I heard her falsify the script, and then felt moved
to volunteer for a non-speaking part. Each vowel toned
slowly where its patron noun had crept. The child inside
the store wore pink on its pale head. I liked everything
approximating a protective instinct. Nothing about the man
who stood there made the bird vibrato go away. It was snowing
where I left it. At the corner of Ludington Street and something
with the number 10, perhaps. Just now, the chimney sounded
a metallic, indrawn breath. You called, and I removed myself.
I broke into my atmosphere, where every cue was printed
on a gray card with pale ink. The lights were on my face. My face
was at attention. A general malaise slept in the field, a silken
storehouse of old crops. I grazed where I might walk. And soon
there were identities to read. Now I am young enough to know
the child is not my own. Pure teak. A thought, perhaps a revolution,
met with simpering. 

Justice as a word, resolve, the nubile fortress of disaggregation,
in nomine patris

Sheila E. Murphy