-
What the Neighbors Heard
- Utah State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
[5] WhAt the neiGhBOrS heArD nothing. nothing at all. And distant cries, apparently, are not the things we hear but call out in our sleep — a sudden fear or reckoning that sits us up in bed, waking, slowly waking, and then the shaking, and then the sober lying down again. it’s what your father does: a ritual cry as if to call you home or as if to say goodbye — goodbye — goodbye. tender reunions, or a gradual dying. the pacing round your room, his mourning dance. his search for answers — or grace. how could no one have heard you call our names? And then the invocation from his knees, the terrible refrain that always shakes him: the simple word please a passerby reported hearing — but did not stop. entreaty? Or your supplication to a deaf God? your effort to appease? Or perhaps it wasn’t words, but the shivering of limbs shedding their leaves. Can nature sympathize? or only echo how we call, tremble, breathe? Please, the blades of grass, rows of hedges, swaying trees must have uttered to a universe of passers-by. Please, to a pantheon of gods, also bowed, also recasted, [6] as if to mirror your appeal — or worse, perhaps as if to see past it. ...