Women know how to wait.
They smell the dust, listen to light bulbs dim and guard the children pale with dreaming. They hear danger tapping along walls, sidewalks sinking and edges of the city bruising the landscape. She corrects his dive, restores the promise of his form, each movement clear in the instant of falling. The moment reversed, she reels him up to where he's still sitting on the bank. Now, mother covers her scalp with hair torn by its roots.