The Sad Child's House
- The Sad Child's House
When I moved in, my neighbors sighedand said he was a sad child.Somebody had carved bill in the breadboard,
a scrawl of a job I found when I cleaned it.Outside, he'd mortaredstones and formed a lake to hold
his aquatic-creature collection, which,during escrow, perished. I paid moreattention to the pond than the breadboard,
bringing up green-haired weeds, pullingweb-tangled algae off my fingers, smellingcivet on my hands all day. When I scrubbed
at the blue-painted bottom, I read bill againwhere he must have scratchedin soft concrete turning hard.
For years I received gossip from eveningwalkers passing open summer windows—overheard sobbing, grief on breezes
unable to cry out why. Once a man I hiredfor trenching brought me a scarred metal box.Inside, we saw crystal quartz, shaped and polished [End Page 642]
like waterdrops, bill under the lid. By thenI was used to evidence, to feeling boy's life—a fin ghost waving at my reflection if I look
too long at bill beneath his surfaceuntil the wind blows and my image disappearsand everything around the house shivers. [End Page 643]
marsha truman cooper's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, Prairie Schooner, and The Tampa Review. Her most recent chapbook is A Knot of Worms. She won first place in the New Letters Awards for Writers competition for poetry and received the Bernice Slote Award from Prairie Schooner.
