from my mother’s side I had gone to see the happy blood.  I left her there, and she read without me her own lips.  I couldn’t tell if she’d been defeated by the box, its contents, or both.  I passed a bucket on wheels and a mop dragging a man for water.  I felt old; my dress, older.  I stretched the soft loan of my neck into the aisle the boy had made most of on his knees before the slack of his youth spent itself bone and pitched him the lesser length.  his sister or his young mother lifted him by his shorts and tucked his smaller parts with her fingertips as into the private mouths of even smaller fish.  a package of sliced bread fell from a lower shelf and relieved the moment its alien drama.  the boy convulsed as if he’d been allowing now recalled tape measures from the coil of his belly.  my mother yanked me away from the rent of that scene so quickly a star from my nose loosed itself into the ******’s acre, the white of my eye.