Accounted For

One Morning,

62 One Morning, a spider climbs through the right eye of a brass god. The obsessive girl is on the opposite side sewing buttons on a shirt with double-thick thread the day her grandmother, wearing her calf-length raspberry wool, beaver-trimmed coat, slips on the icy sidewalk shattering her glasses and a wrist. There’s no rescue toward, just slow radio guitars braiding air. In a kitchen bright sun, she bites off the last of the seven knots, spatulas out for herself a powdery lemon square. She’s struck by the certainty of the fork left standing in the sausage on the stove, the wooden measuring stick leaning at 22 red inches exactly, as always, between the refrigerator and the tool bench. She might have caught a glimpse of blood splashed onto the snowbank from her window, but her gaze runs towards the neighbor’s eldest son crawling drunk up the drive, bellowing something about a dead dog put out in the trash. The boy’s father is whipping his back with a long birch switch while his mother stands in the doorway, stroking her favorite cat in sets of three, always praying under her breath for the safe delivery of all souls. 63 The door is difficult to open. Dozen of years and the girl must try to forgive them, herself . . . She believes the easy spider: From now on, carry nothing through the unblinking dark. ...