When I was nine years old my father abandoned his mother and sister as if they were nothing. In the anxiety of this event I fled to the perimeter of the Garden, but his harsh judgement followed me there, worn into my thoughts like the hollows in the rocks beneath a waterfall. Thus I learned to reject the conception that an entity picks and chooses among us, who shall suffer and who shall prosper, as monstrous. I sort, keeping a few manuscripts, photographs, and a quantity of art supplies. I was likely seven or eight years old.
Spring ought to have made gains by now but our days remain gray and ice-sheathed.
Without notice, something sharp and cautionary breaks through. Impulses one could call manic threaten the compliant, silent demeanor I have cultivated these many weeks. Happy hysteria is feared yet longed for, its green brightness something I must withhold, a peculiar, protective, irrational impulse. Tiles in the shower enclosure fall away from plaster that is black in places with mold. Chunks tumble into the tub where they remain.