somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man takes the door from your father and there they go hand in hand to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurts were people keeping them apart. your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet. at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud. amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.
in three days the man will come back; your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.