When you point to our skin and say naranjo,
I’ve never been so in love with citrus.

I draw his attention to the sign, and it’s only after Myra reads it that she bothers to look at me, but there’s no sympathy in her eyes, only pity.

Yet it was possible to point to either one of them and say, Look right there. Do you see the path those stories are tracing? Do you see those dandelion seeds? That’s where everything important took place. That’s where all the meaning was.

Here comes the curse.

I was full, my feet upon the threshold of a door.

Our separation from David left us disoriented. Rooms felt empty even as my mother returned her Rose Medallion porcelain and silver tea service to their original places. The stereo sat unused, soundless. David’s rocker was exiled to the garage, then the county dump.

It’s late in summer. A cricket is calling. For every cricket that calls, a trillion must be listening, the child thinks.

We’ve been remodeling our kitchen for the better part of a year. That makes us sound fancier than we are. In truth, a guy’s installing Ikea cabinets and tile we got at a seconds sale.

He smiled as he played, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing here each day on an abandoned street. Before the war, he certainly must’ve done all right playing to the foot traffic entering St. Michael's. But now? How was he surviving now?