Yesterday, my son taught me the sign for lockdown— different than locking a door, or the shutdown we invented at the start of the pandemic. Little fistfuls of locks swept quickly between us, a sign designed especially for school.
Among tall silver birches. Dogs yipping beyond the timberline. In my bag, a clementine for us to split. The river’s image trembles as you dip your foot in, raking the pebbles back and forth till silt rises to the surface.
With cries we woke the bear whose slumber was ancient, the bees whose frenzied paths were as methodical as a plowman’s. Between thickets we darted, our breath held like an amulet between our numbed hands.
I’m reading Zami in my girlfriend’s bed. It’s the first time I’ve read it in a long time, and will be her first time if she reads it like I told her to. She got it at the library after I found it and I said,
