Aftermath  

The crash happens, and then everything waits.

The tow truck arrives—sleek and gleaming,  
its midnight-black paint absorbing the streetlights  
in a perfect, polished hush.
It is not a wrecker—it is a machine with purpose,  
its curved chassis hugging the ground like a race car—  
the quiet arrogance of a predator.
The hydraulic arm unfolds with practiced precision,  
chrome glinting, not a speck of rust anywhere.

My car, foreign but familiar, hesitates in its wreckage.
A midsize sedan manufactured in a plant  
where workers assembled it with American hands,  
yet its heritage lingers in every curve,  
a design caught between old and new.
Its paint—a muted slate, unassuming—  
shows years of careful touch-ups,  
my own hands smoothing over time and dents itself.
Next to the tow truck, it looks misplaced,  
a junker entered as a joke for the Daytona 500.

The insurance company—AllFarmressive—  
calls twice, their scripted reassurances tumbling  
into contradictions.
"We’ll expedite your claim," they promise,  
but attach an additional note:  
"Due to unforeseen delays,  
processing times may be adjusted  
without prior notice."  
The website insists everything is  
"streamlined and efficient,"  
but each link loops back to the homepage.
Every representative sounds the same,  
pausing at the same beats,  
reading from a script that never quite  
answers the question asked.

The rental car resists.
The screen blinks erratically,  
menus nested inside menus,  
each button press yielding nonsense—  
"Safety Belts Huggings Allowed,"  
"Start Not Start? “  
I jab at the touch screen,  
scrolling through untranslated menus,  
attempting to override locked settings.
Each swipe resets the interface,  
bringing me back to the same blank screen,  
blinking in stubborn refusal.
It moves with a sluggish, uneven pull,  
dragging toward the right,  
forcing me to correct, over and over,  
a silent, insistent opposition.
It does not trust me.
It wants to remind me what happened.

The bumper stays on the sidewalk for three days.
A fractured artifact, curled at one edge,  
its metal warped—something half-melted, half-chewed.
Every dent tells a story,  
some shallow, some deep—  
one an open palm shape,  
another., the edge of a key.
The torn plastic lining exposes the layers beneath,  
each piece folding inward,  
a body returning to itself.
By day four, it is gone.

The streetlights flicker when I drive past.
The pavement hums under my tires,  
a restless, steady vibration.
Somewhere ahead, a distant car horn wails,  
too long, too sharp, disappearing into silence.
The shadows stretch unnaturally in the glow  
of a traffic signal that no longer changes.
Something has shifted.
Something is lingering.

I watch the headlights stretch ahead,  
the road tightens, then vanishes into silence

I know the crash is over,  
but I don’t think it’s done with me.

Between the Waves  

There was never a single border,  
only the shifting tide of language,  
guavas glowing in the heat,  
the churn of Spanglish rolling in  
before the tide could pull it back.

At the checkout line, the cashier asks,  
"Paper or plastic?"—so simple, so sharp.
I glance at Mama, but her words stick,  
caught between lips and hesitation.
I answer for us. The shame clings,  
her silence louder than any mistake.

Each summer, my abuela arrived  
with stories curled like conch shells,  
her voice full of salt and lineage,  
each word a bridge we crossed halfway,  
somewhere between knowing and forgetting.

She tells me of the women before us,  
how her mother boiled guava leaves  
to ease the aches of growing bones,  
how a girl’s silence could mean strength  
but never surrender. “You carry oceans,”  
she says, pressing a shell into my palm.
"Listen, and you will always know  
where you come from."  

In the humid dusk, I traced my name  
in sidewalk chalk, watched rain  
blur it into something new.
Could memory be pliant? Could belonging  
be washed and reshaped by the wind?

But what of the body—  
its slow turning, the way girlhood folds  
like an old dress, pressed into something new?
What of the hands that will cradle, will teach,  
will shape another name into the world?

I watch my mother’s weary eyes,  
the way she smooths the hem of her days,  
thumb and forefinger pressing the fabric,  
flattening something unseen.
I wonder if I will smooth my own worry  
the way she does—without pause,  
without breaking.

Outside, the cicadas rasp,  
their voices a low and constant hum,  
a pulse threading through the thick heat  
like something old, something knowing.

Here, the neon hum of the city never rests,  
palm fronds shudder against the skyline,  
the edge between past and present dissolving,  
Miami swallowing whole every homecoming,  
every goodbye never quite gone.

At the bodega, my friends are waiting,  
laughing too loud, pressing tamarind candy  
into my palm, the sticky sweetness clinging—  
a small amber stone, a promise of what remains.
We swap bracelets—plastic beads clinking—  
a quiet oath in neon-lit safety.

But between jokes, between  
sips of cola and smudged lip gloss,  
I catch glimpses—mothers’ tired hands,  
names that slip too easily from memory,  
the weight of futures we pretend not to see,  
just for now, just for tonight.

Still, the tamarind sticks,  
a sharpness beneath its sweetness,  
as if warning—this is not just candy,  
but proof of change, proof that  
what is soft can still pull,  
what is sweet can still sting.

As I walk home, salt on my lips,  
the moon folds itself into the bay,  
the water whispering,  
"Listen, listen,"
until it carries the answer away.

Somewhere, I smooth my sleeve,  
flattening the fabric beneath my palm.

Passing Through


The city recedes, and in the dim hush of the bookshop, she stands—  
a shadow among shelves, folded inward,  
something bent in her shoulders, a shape recognized but unacknowledged.  

Once, she had said nothing but told everything—  
the stagger in her step, the new weight in her limbs,  
the way she lingered at the edge of the studio light,  
no longer the form he had wanted to capture.  

He watches now, tracing absences—  
the ***** of her shoulders once held tension, a poise  
that suggested movement even in stillness.  
Now she carries herself differently,  
the lines of her frame settling rather than waiting,  
her presence less an idea, more a fact.  

Once, she was all gold-lit angles,  
the right lines, the hush of reflected glow—  
a frequent hire, the form desired,  
an artifact of someone else’s vision.  

She had belonged to the eye before she had belonged to herself—  
posed into being by hands that never touched her,  
rendered in strokes that softened what was sharp,  
every detail adjusted to fit a world not her own.  
She had been borrowed from that illusion,  
but had never been made to stay.  

But too often seen, too often known,  
a form rehearsed until it dulled,  
the lines that once shimmered with possibility  
grew fixed, predictable.  
No longer his vision, only a presence—  
no longer his invocation, only a fact.  

Now she moves with a tired grace,  
her skin softer, edges blurred,  
a body gone through motherhood, through ruin, life—  
the exact silhouette that he will never sketch again.  

She does not see him watching.  
She does not recognize the shadow he has become.  
She steps out through one door. He chooses another.  
Two figures, moving apart,  
the way a vision unspools,  
the way a muse disappears.  

He does not linger, does not reconsider—  
what was once luminous has dimmed,  
what was once rare is now merely seen.  
Yet what is art if not the wreckage and the salvage—  
the ruin and the radiance, the lifted and the fallen,  
the flawed, the irredeemable and the redeemed?  

He will not ask. He will not answer.  
And so, what he creates will never hold her.

After all the operations, after the slow unraveling,  
I trace the shimmer left behind,  
a pearl forming in the absence of what was—  
the weight of my steps lighter, not in grace,  
but in uncertainty mixed with hope.  

I do not run anymore  
Yet, I watch Tom Cruise sprint, sprint—  
limbs loose, effortless at sixty-two,  
vaulting over rooftops,  
clinging to the side of airplanes,  
breathing forever underwater.  

He crashes, bruises, bleeds in theory,  
but never in flesh—  
his smile intact, his hair untouched,  
a muscular chest absorbing each blow,  
with no marks,  
no limp, no hesitation.  
I content myself with the thought
that I am the real mission impossible,
the one facing the final dead reckoning.

Sure,  I sit here, reckoning with the
dead weight  of legs that will not vault,  
feet that drag instead of sprint,  
watching a man outrun time itself,  
as I count the losses my body cannot ignore.  

Neuropathy hums in my hands,  
a static whisper beneath the skin,  
feet waiting for signals that never arrive.  
Pouchitis returns, rhythmic,  
a ghost cycle that feels almost natural,  
a body remembering what it should forget.  

And yet—there is something else.  
Not just the loss, not just the ache,  
but the way illness made me listen,  
the way it softened the edges of my voice,  
the way it let me hold my wife’s hand  
with a reverence I never knew before.  

I see faces at the mall, at the movies—  
those moving without thought,  
and those like me, learning how to walk again.  
I see my brother’s quiet grief and joy,  
my own reflected back in his silence.  

To confront death is to speak to it,  
to name it,  
to let it sit beside you,  
to let it teach you how to be human.  

I am a better poet for this.  
Not for the suffering,  
but for the softness it left me.  

And somewhere within the nacre,  
within the slow layering of survival,  
I am still here.
of survival,  
I am still here.

Searching for Florecitas at the Supermercado

We walk, my brother and I, as the cool breath of night yields to the slow, sticky press of morning. Condado’s half-lit streets shimmer under retreating shadows, sidewalks smoothed by wealth, indifferent to our steps. Beach condos glow in the thinning dark, their balconies high as forgetting.  

Somewhere in this maze of Boricua pride of  polished storefronts, there is a supermercado. Somewhere beyond joggers in designer gear, behind terracotta houses older than the neighborhood’s ambition, is the candy our mother carried home. “florecitas”, sugar and memory pressed into a flowered shell.  

The hotel server had given simple directions—“izquierda, derecha, izquierda—left, right, left—and it would be there, waiting at the end of the street.” But in the air between us, the words blurred, my mind twisting Spanish into English. Derecha became left, izquierda became right, and the city rearranged itself under our misplaced steps.  

We moved forward, confident in error, passing high-fashion joggers and dogs bred for display. Past palm-lined streets, the world opened—not a supermercado, but the sea, stretching, oblivious.  

Tourist hotels framed us, their whitewashed facades reflecting the blank stares of wanderers who, like us, had no answers. We backtracked. Again, the city folded into the quiet wealth of Condado’s homes—white brick walls, gated walks—another dead end, another seawall holding back the morning tide.  

For a moment, we stood there, the heat thick now, pressing against us like the city was unwilling to yield. The ocean stretched wide, indifferent, erasing footprints before they could last. Condado did not welcome hesitation.  There was movement, commerce, and precision—but none for us.

I closed my eyes, searching for something in the lull between breath and heat. A memory surfaced—Morovis, my grandmother’s porch, the way the mountain mist rolled in at dusk, cooling the air before settling into silence, the scent of damp earth and slow conversation.

There, I would listen, swaying in my sun-faded hammock below, to my abuela chanting the rosary long after all her children had gone to sleep.  She was chanting in that squeaky rocker passed on to her like the house from her mother.  The rhythm was effortless as if she had always known how to move with the wind. In that place, Spanish was not a test, not an obstacle—it wrapped around me like something familiar, something inherited.  

But here, the air did not soften. The city did not cradle me like the mountains and old houses once had. The ocean did not care about misplaced words or lost directions.

We went back to the hotel, back to the start.

And there—was a man, his clothes worn by years, hair tangled in the wind, smoking a cigarette with the ease of someone who had lived too long to hurry. I asked for directions; my Spanish was frayed by childhood limits. He gestured—hands folding left, right, left—and I finally saw it. My mistake, my misplaced certainty.  

Knowing the way, even speaking the words correctly, didn’t make Condado mine. It never would.  

I let out a breath, the weight of it pressing into the thick, unmoving heat. The city had rearranged me, twisted the language in my mouth, and turned me inside out. Not by mistake—but by design.

Our walk deepens into the residential core of Condado, where the white brick houses stand uniform and impenetrable, their gates casting long shadows as the morning sun asserts itself. The sidewalks shrink with every block, narrowing from comfortable passage to tight corridors until finally, they are no more than thin strips of concrete—a gangplank hovering beside the street.  

We adjust our steps to fit the space, shoulders brushing against walls that do not give, the rough texture of aging plaster catching against my shirt. A gate swings open beside us, forcing me to step sideways. I press briefly against the wrought iron frame before slipping past, the cool metal leaving an imprint I can still feel as we continue forward.  

Here, the rhythm is different. The residents move alone, drifting toward the beach or peeling off toward the hotel district’s sleek restaurants. The streets bear Spanish names familiar yet distant, their syllables rolling off my tongue with a quiet recognition. They feel like names I should know deeply, but they sit on the edge of memory, just beyond reach.  

When we reach the supermercado, it is not the supermarket we see first—it is the high-rise tower looming above the parking lot, twenty stories of alternating terracotta hues, shifting from brown at its base to a soft gold at its peak. It is the only splash of color in this enclave, the only building that resists Condado’s strict homogeneity.  It stands like an Aztec temple without layers, the jutting balconies forming a jagged silhouette against the sky. It feels at odds with its surroundings yet completely absorbed into them, a contradiction standing quietly in place.

Then there is the supermercado itself, a sprawling gray box whose presence is neither defiant nor inviting but simply inevitable. There is no sign of charm, no gesture toward the past, just a square of necessity, unmoved by its location.  

We enter through the community side, the entrance facing away from the four-lane highway and its cold symmetry of traffic signals, away from the city's flow. This side of the supermarket is quieter and more resigned. The glass doors slide open, spilling out a rush of cool air, stopping our breath for a beat before we step through. The chill clings to our skin, but the heat lingers in our clothes, a presence that does not easily leave.  

Inside, the silence follows—a muffled quiet that absorbs the outside world, swallowing the hum of the street, the weight of the sun, the narrowing paths that brought us here.  

For a brief moment, I hesitate. The cold air presses against my skin, a sharp contrast to the warmth still clinging to my clothes. A shiver runs through me—not from the temperature, but from the sudden shift, the feeling of having stepped into something weightless and sterile.  Overhead, fluorescent lights buzz in a steady, electric rhythm, filling the space with a sound too mechanical to belong to anyone.  

Somewhere beyond the produce section, I hear Spanish murmuring between aisles—soft, familiar—but distant, threading through the air like something overheard rather than shared. A voice rises for a moment, just long enough to catch the shape of a phrase my mother used to say before it fades again into the hum of the supermarket.

I almost turn and reach it—but then it’s gone, swallowed by the fluorescent hum, leaving nothing behind. My fingers tighten around the edge of the shopping basket, the plastic pressing into my palm, grounding me in a place that still does not quite fit.

The supermarket is big and clean— almost too familiar, reminiscent of the Publix back home. Yet, despite the bright, polished aisles, there’s an odd sense of displacement. The products look the same, but the Spanish labels create just enough distance to remind me I’m somewhere else, somewhere I don’t quite belong.  

We wander the aisles. I scan the packaging, piecing together meaning as best I can— able to read more than I can speak or understand. My brother moves with ease, picking up local versions of pork rinds, sugar cookies, a guava drink.

The florecitas aren’t where I expect them to be, lost beyond my certainty. I ask a young woman who is stocking the produce aisle. She tilts her head, confused, then shrugs. She’s never heard of them. Maybe they go by another name.
She calls someone over her store intercom, her voice rising into the blank air of fluorescent light. A response crackles through—the florecitas are in aisle seven.

We head there, weaving through more aisles, past displays of packaged comforts and near-familiarities. When I finally find them, they sit low on the shelf, their orange tins big enough to see yet easy enough to overlook. I lift one, rattling it gently, hoping for a scent—but nothing escapes. Still solid in my hands, their presence here is proof: they exist beyond memory.  

For a moment, I debated taking two tins, wondering if they might be seized on the cruise ship the next day. But they should be safe if they are unopened and in their original packaging. Still, my luggage wouldn’t hold two, and the thought of losing them before I could eat them on the open water kept me from taking the risk.  

At the checkout, I pick up pastries for my wife. Guava is a safe choice, something familiar amidst the rows of unknown fruit fillings, flavors popular here but nowhere in my personal history.  

My brother says he wants to treat us, pulling out his ATM card—his Social Security disability account, which I oversee as his representative payee. The cashier, a short, older woman with the quiet authority of someone who has worked here her whole life, scans the items efficiently, without pause.  

I punch in the PIN—numbers for Richard Petty and Jeff Gordon, my brother’s favorite racers. Declined. I tried again, but this time, his birthday was declined.
  
The cashier exhales, mimicking how to slide the card through the reader. The line behind us grows restless, shifting in collective impatience. I asked if I could switch to credit, but I can’t back out of the transaction.  

My brother watches, unbothered, chewing the edge of his thumbnail, waiting for me to solve the problem like I always do. I take out my special Amex—a business card with upper-level privileges—but the cashier isn’t impressed. The line thickens, voices rising slightly in volume, a growing murmur of frustration, disinterest, and waiting.  

I swipe. It goes through like it always does.
  
The tension dissolves as the receipt prints, the final proof of purchase—a transaction completed, a process endured, a place navigated but never truly entered.  

We step outside, my brother carrying the bag. The streets are more familiar now, and the walk back is half as long. I want nothing more than to return to the hotel, hand my wife the pastries, and wash away the grime and quiet shame in the shower. To rest, let exhaustion overtake frustration, and turn my focus forward—toward the cruise, toward the day at sea where I could eat the florecitas without hesitation, without misplaced expectation.  

As we move through the streets, Condado feels smaller. Not because I understand it better but because I no longer need to.
---

Desire Lines

I have wandered every concrete, tarmac, grass, and dirt path near my house. And yet my dog Hurricane, or just plain Cane, knows their way better than I do. He knows when the scent of the trail must yield right, left, or straight ahead. When the desire lines must lead forward to greater passions or the stench of fear should force doubling back.  

Today, Cane is all forward momentum, following the flattened grass past the eroded foot trails, beyond the perfect registration of deer, into the warrens, stopping only in hesitation at the barely-there print of a broad plantigrade walker, its edges pressed into the damp grass, its weight undeniable.  

He knows it as only something bigger than himself. I think that maybe it's a bear, or even worse, something just as patient, just as watching.  

Cane’s nostrils flare. His fur lifts along his spine. Then, he shifts. His body contracts. He pulls inward, ready to turn. And he does turn, but not toward me. His head swivels sharply to the side. His ears cut the air, his body still taut.  

Something is there. Here. Watching.  

I see a figure slip through the brush—low, lean, measured in its movements. A coyote. Its fur is a patchwork of dust and hunger. There is a white, ripped-open kitchen bag in its mouth. Chicken bones and spoiled lettuce leak onto the ground. It stops shy of the clearing, its unblinking eyes fixed on us.  

Cane doesn’t growl. He doesn’t lunge. He knows the difference—how a thing that stalks is different from one that runs.  

But Cane trembles now. His muscles twitch under his fur, breath shallow, a guttural whine slipping through his teeth.  

The coyote tilts its head—slow, deliberate, testing. Then, a shift—a barely perceptible adjustment in weight, its haunches lowering just enough to suggest it is considering the space between us, measuring distance, gauging intent. Its jaw tightens, a subtle flex of muscle beneath the dirt-matted fur, the faintest parting of its lips as if preparing to speak in the only way it knows how.  

I remember my brother, the angler, advising me on what to do in coyote encounters. Hazing, he called it.  

With my free hand, I take my Boricua pride cap off my head and start waving its black shading-to-gray mesh above me. I tug Cane’s leash with my bound hand, forcing him behind me.  

The coyote stiffens but does not yield.  

I shout the most primal, profane thing I can recall in the Spanish I knew before English took over my thoughts.  

“Puta de madre, déjame an mí y a mi perro en paz. Vuelve al agujero infernal de donde viniste.”  

The coyote doesn’t move.  

I stomp at it. I lunge forward, kicking dirt, grass, and twigs into its face. Cane whimpers, tensing further, his weight pressing into my leg like he wants to fold into me, disappear into safer ground.  

Still nothing.  

I pray for a miracle, reciting the prayer my mother taught me for moments of helplessness.  

"God, my Defender, I come to You in fear and helplessness..."  

I pray beyond all the desire lines I knew. Praying to above, to everything, to anyone that can hear and save me.  
Then, the earth quakes beneath us.  

It starts as a distant but insistent hum, building into a growl that swallows the silence. The ground shivers beneath my boots. Then Cane flinches, ears flattening, legs coiled to flee.  

The sound comes first—the grinding roar, the violent protest of metal against stone. Then the scent—gasoline thick in the air, choking the breath from my lungs, mixing with the raw pungency of turned soil. Dust rises, catching in my throat, coating my skin in the residue of a world undone.  

Or renewed?  

The bulldozer bursts through the treeline with no hesitation, no regard for the delicate fractures of the earth beneath its treads. The clearing shifts before my eyes—grass swallowed, warrens collapsed, footprints erased in the wake of industry’s advance. The soft, worn trails Cane and I followed, flattened under the rhythm of our footsteps, are lost beneath metal weight.  

It grinds forward relentlessly, its blade shoving uprooted grass into twisted piles, its treads pressing deeper with each pass, embedding their mark where instinct once did. The scent of earth is overtaken now—by the acrid sting of oil, by heat radiating off steel, by the mechanical certainty that does not pause to consider what was here before.  

The coyote hesitates—just for a breath, just long enough to judge this new threat—then vanishes, a ghost swallowed into the shadows of the trees.  

Cane bolts first, his body snapping into motion, sprinting back down the path we came. I stand there longer than I should, staring at what remains.  

Desire lines—paths shaped by instinct, longing, and familiarity. Each marks an unspoken decision, a pull toward something known or unknown.  

And now, buried.  

The bulldozer moves forward, carving a permanence we cannot undo.  

Cane pauses just ahead, glancing back over his shoulder, his eyes dark and unsure. He does not whine. He does not wait for me. He simply watches—just for a breath—then turns away, retreating with more certainty than I can muster.  

I know I should follow. The path to safety is clear. But for a moment, my feet are heavy, pressed into the dirt like I might leave my own mark here, some proof that I existed before the machines came.  

Then, finally, I turn back, tracing Cane’s desire lines to safety—the ones that lead not toward curiosity but away from ruin.

Final Call  



The screen flickered in the hush of enveloping dark,  
Michael Douglas pacing, his fate unraveling—  
Fatal Attraction, a movie about consequence,  
its shadows pressing forward.  
But beneath the flickering flames, something was wrong,  
settling into my gut like a held breath,  
bending the air—quiet rupture, breath held too long.  

Five minutes home, five minutes into loss.  
Five minutes stretched thin and hollow,  
filled with the weight of dread and waiting,  
filled with the road wounding back to her—  
wounds layered in time, mapped upon fragile feet,  
circling through lineage, waiting in blood.  
Filled with my world shifting.  
My world already shifted.  

The neighbors had already assembled in solemn witness,  
most tight-lipped, others yielding to grief in sobs and silence.  

There was Bill Edwards, the neighbor across the way,  
broad-shouldered, his southern drawl flickering,  
caught between words. Marlene, his portly wife,  
her red hair dimmed beneath the porch light.  
Bernie, their next-door pal, shifting, too large  
for the doorway. Shirley, his second wife, thin,  
arms folded inward, already bracing against absence,  
looking like she had lost the most fragile thing in her life.  

Then movement—the EMTs carrying her body past them,  
in a white nightgown that ended primly just above her knees,  
not in the grandma style she hated,  
but with a quiet grace between youthful innocence  
and the dignified ease of womanhood,  
an elegy stitched into fabric, neither ostentatious nor meek,  
reflecting beauty that lingered, pride that refused to fade.  

The gown bore food stains but no blood. And  
as she passed fully before me,  
her eyes were wide open, lips parted  
in a smile caught between a gasp  
and the ghost of a smile—everything  
lingering between this world and the next,  
frozen, like her, in a moment that never completed itself.  

Ed, my stepdad, stands lost in the doorway,  
his shock sealing him in place,  
his body answering to nothing,  
his stare hollow until it finds me.  

And there—her beige Lazy Boy,  
its footrest still half-kicked from the final trembling,  
handgrips marked by the last imprint of her touch,  
the whole chair pressed with her final form in the fabric.  
The matching chair was untouched, still waiting.  

The television murmurs onward,  
Tom Brokaw, his voice unfazed, reciting history,  
the U.S. and Soviet Union signing a nuclear treaty…  

The world still carrying on.

                                       2

The ambulance pulls away, its lights dim,
not flashing, just retreating—
just driving away,
first a roar, then an echo, then silence.
  
The neighbors start to leave,
offering the usual condolences,
the usual earnest offers of help,
the gestures of grief  that
vanish with the closing of doors,

leaving my stepdad and me
in the almost empty house,
the quiet hum of the house…

And with my younger mentally disabled brother, Casey—
alone upstairs, unaware of mom’s death below,
the murmurs and hands clutching shoulders,
oblivious to the slow procession of mourning,
unaware of the neighbors streaming in and out
in shocked sobs that fold into the walls,
unaware that the one thing that loved him the most
is gone.

I want to call to him, to tell him—  
but the weight of it presses against my throat.  
How do you explain absence to someone  
who has only ever known unconditional presence?  
How do you break the world open like that,  
cut a line through someone’s understanding of love  
and expect them to move forward as if nothing has changed?  

I watch as Ed wipes the last streak of tears  
with the tips of his fingers,
then drag his hand through his forever-gray hair—  
gray since the moment my mother met him,  
gray for every memory I carry of him.
  
The tears have left his face shallow,
heightening his resemblance to Herman Munster
that my mom, myself and the other two kids-
a sister who lives in Alaska, and a brother
lingering between a move from Texas to Colorado-
would kid him constantly about.

The joke was effortless then—  
a source of warmth, an anchor of familiarity.  
Now, I see only the exhaustion in it,  
the quiet collapse of something once harmless,  
the way grief distorts even the gentlest things.

But tonight, the joke is hollow.  
the house, emptier than before.  
And within it, everything that laughter has left behind.

He stumbles into the next big concern,
letting every one know what had happened—
my brother and sister, his two sons
from his first marriage,
one in Chicago, the other chasing Hollywood dreams.

Yet, before he speaks,
he exhales—long, slow—    
as if steadying himself against the weight of it all,  
his hand hovering over the chair’s armrest,  
uncertain, unwilling to disturb  
what was left exactly as she had last touched it.  

Then, the decision.  
He reaches into the left-side pocket  
of her Lazy Boy, pulling out her old address book.  
Its worn pages, folded corners,  
the ink of her handwriting still pressed deep.

He stares at the first number.  
A breath. A pause.  

Then, he dials.  

                                   3

Her absence lingers, curling into corners,  
softening the edges of untouched cups,  
settling into the folds of sheets that will not be remade.  

Her scent—warm spice and detergent—  
clings to the hallway,  
woven into the fabric of the chair that held her.  
Not entirely gone. Not entirely here.  

Even in silence, she speaks:  
A pair of socks with grip bottoms under the table,  
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation left spine-up on a nightstand,  
a grocery list half-scribbled in her hurried hand—  
as if time had paused mid-thought,  
as if the world had allowed one last unfinished line.  

But time does not pause.  
The television hums forward,  
Tom Brokaw shifts to the next news report,
something beyond  the treaty signed,
ink binding nations to restraint.  

And yet, no restraint was given here—  
not to the body unraveling,  
not to the moment that collapsed too soon.  
In a world of precision, she was a miscalculation,  
a faltering equation wrapped in fragile flesh,  
a quiet failure against something too vast to undo.  

I wonder if  what I inherit is more than memory,  
something beyond the way illness carves paths,  
the  denying the way blood carries warnings.  
Each footstep echoes hers,  
each glance at my own hands  
reveals the future she left behind.  

All conversations we never had,  
All questions I never asked—  
Did she know?  
Did she wonder if I would carry this weight?  
Did she hold her own hands in the quiet and wish  
they were not the blueprints of mine?  

And yet, the world is unmoved.  
It does not ask. It does not answer.  

The road outside hums with motion,  
cars rolling forward into the evening.  
Neighbors retreating indoors,  
their grief folded into the rhythm of routine.  

And still—  

The world carries on.
  
                                   4  

Upstairs, the television hums—Baryshnikov gliding  
in white, his movements sharp yet fluid,  
an elegance sculpted in repetition.  
Casey mirrors him, his fingers tracing  
the weightless air, his feet shifting softly—  
a language of motion, untouched by grief.  

I stand in the doorway, the words heavy  
on my mind. The room is a collision—  
rolled up Disney posters on shelves,
glossy brochures of concept cars on his desk,  
beige ballet slippers folded neatly beside  
die-cast models of Mustangs, Corvettes,
on his bureau and nightstands  
the sleek curve of imagined speed.  
Each piece of his world, a fragment,  
a comfort—unchanged, unshaken.  

“Are we leaving soon?” he asks,  
his eyes locked on the screen,  
his breath syncing to the tempo  
of a dancer who understands flight.  

I nod, my throat tight.  
His mind is ahead of me,  
chasing movement, chasing the next step,  
the space between absence and understanding  
still unformed, untouched.  

He twirls his fingers, slow, deliberate.  
He smiles. “I want to show Mom my routine.”  
His joy untouched, whole.  

I inhale. How do you tell someone  
that everything has shifted?  
That love remains, but presence does not?  
That the shape of memory now holds  
all that she was, all that she’ll ever be?  

A flicker—his face tightens,  
a brief tremor, his brows furrowing  
as if the rhythm has faltered,  
as if something in the air has unsettled  
the shape of his movements.  
For a second, I see it—  
a shadow of understanding,  
a glimpse of absence—  
and then, the rhythm returns.  

His hands lift again,  
his feet shift, gentle echoes of Baryshnikov’s grace,  
not the jumps, but the hands,  
the sweep of fingers across invisible space,  
the pull and release of breath  
as if the dance itself could replace  
what is missing.  

And then: “I have rehearsal tonight.”  
His voice steady, matter-of-fact.  

The world is still moving.  

I nod again. “Let’s go.”  

The strip mall is quiet,  
the dance studio tucked between  
a dry cleaner and a bakery,  
its windows humming with light.  

Casey steps in—comfortable, certain,  
a boy in motion, a boy untouched by hesitation.  
The music begins, soft and nostalgic,  
not ballet, not classical precision,  
but something simpler.  
A slide, a rhythm, a quiet homage.  

His feet move with certainty,  
his body following something beyond technique—  
something felt, something known.  

The instructor watches, nods.  
"This is the best he's ever done."  

And I stand there, unmoving,  
watching him, watching the echoes of her  
in the way he lifts his arms,  
the way his posture carries an unspoken grace.  

My chest tightens.  

He is more than what they expected.  
More than the limits they imposed.  
More than the shape of words  
they used to measure him.  

The duet begins—the instructor guiding,  
Casey following,  
his body folding into something  
greater than motion, greater than memory—  
a love pressed into every step,  
every shift of weight,  
every breath between the beats.  

He danced for her.  

And will dance for her always.