Fabulae

On Wardman Road

On Wardman Road Pillbugs clench under the cracked slate of the garden. Massive clippers: their whisk— snip heavy in the slowing repetitions of August. The child in the tiger lilies looks up. One silence is the shuddering ladder; another, the father’s white, unfamiliar muscles against the dark hedge.  Tame light, the apparition of driveways. Soft brown, milky white, yellow garages; neat perimeters, backyards. What’s missing is the violent perfection of shadows, and I mentally paint them in—shadows from the skinny poplars, inert cars.  At bedtime the child, thinking of the father’s muscles, asks could you kill me? —no. I mean, could you choke me, could you squeeze me so hard that I would die? He senses that his yes is necessary for her to be sure of him, and his yes is brief, face flickering with something. He pulls the blanket to her chin before brushing a strand of hair from her forehead and leaving the room. The open windows are two wide eyes flat against the mild dark.  15 The child is forbidden the second door of her bedroom, which opens to the porch roof. Sometimes she walks out, asphalt shingles waving unevenly under bare feet. If it is evening, the heat from the roof rises slowly up her legs in the cool air. She stays close to the door, close to the breath of the house. 16 ...