Possessives

POSSESSIVES / Jane Shore In the half-dark, the woman watches her husband sleep, waiting for daylight to return him to her. And soon, the sun will pass through the green transparencies of a leaf, and keep, and so some good. John's book. Men's lives. His. Hers. Its landscape inside him, holding him there, which upon waking, he can't recall. What the man told him in his dream. That funny tree still rattling its name on the tip of his tongue. My. Mine. Ours. In the garden, foxgloves and daylilies— each blossom's schedule of closure. We are not what we contain. The mirror just now beginning to fill with the outlines of things, the turning dreamer, his body flickering across its surface. Beyond the mirror's frame, he dreams a double of himself; but changed. The more he is given, the more the diminishing returns. 18 ¦ The Missouri Review ...