***
The neighbour's lawn mower roars and recedes.
My mother sleeps on the loveseat, my father
on the couch. I shake out mats in the blinding
porch, gather grey tea towels for the laundry.
My father bustles stiffly out to plug in
the kettle, comes up from the cellar with chunks
of maple, measuring, figuring - how to make
wooden nuts and bolts - then is suddenly
sunk in an armchair, open-mouthed asleep,
while June sunlight storms through the house.
***
I ask about the empty mirror frame on the kitchen
wall. My father glances at me and away, looking
reluctant, caught. Then speaks with odd formality,
doggedly, against some current of shyness or disbelief
or sorrow or fear. He says while they were having
lunch there at the table a few weeks ago they heard
a loud bang like a gunshot close by. He looked around
and found the mirror down on the floor, its heavy glass
split up the middle. "You try to get that off of there,"
he points to the empty frame. A slotted hole in its back
locks the frame tight to a round-headed screw set deep
in a wall stud. I lift and slowly work it free, then press it
back into place, centred, anchored. Enclosed blank
wall. "There's no way that could have come off
by itself," he says, bare-headed under low dark cloud.
***
Curled on the loveseat under a blanket
much of each day, sleeping or merely
still, her open eyes travelling the room.
She never grieves for herself, never
stands apart disowning or lamenting
the ruin, but sometimes terrors sweep
through her, weightless spinning and inner
sleets, and she sits shaking, calling out that
she's falling, and my father or I hold her
trying to save her from deep space.
Copyright © 2010 by John Steffler
