Roofing

32 the minnesota review Donna Turner Roofing ? I helped slide metal under shingles. Held edges while you scowled, securing everything but me. I imagined falling; for a moment I dropped like an opened parachute. My arms pumped me inches higher as they do in dreams. My skin glistened with sweat that rolled off like rain. 2 Hours after your mother's death, weeks after our separation, I watched your brother steal carefully behind you, pull your mother's picture from its frame, throw out my toothbrush, as if the two of us were the same. Soon he'd hauled every trace of every woman to the dumpster, the black sack full of reminders: a strand of blonde hair, one of gray, mint dental floss, fingerprints clinging to sheets and towels. Then you looked up, Turner 33 went outside. Looks like rain you said. 3 Later I watched you through the window rocking, finally content without women, your grief quiet in spite of deaths filmed on the six o'clock news. I climbed the ladder to the roof, those heavy tv voices trailed me, their small noises at my back as I tore shingles, ripped metal from its place. Water falling, falling, at last from the sky, through the holes I'd made, now filling the house with rain. ...