The Palace of Contemplating Departure

Waiting

60 Waiting I know about the waiting: keeping the phone close to the bedside hearing it ring and waking, unsure of the gathering ceiling or the man asleep on the bed sheets beside me. When she finally calls me, she calls from a strip mall or the Santa Clara jail or she’s calling from a roadside where four large men help heave her van upright and I hear they’re dousing fires from canyon to the coast. Fall, says my father, the cold front’s close so he takes down the white lights from the garden in the backyard— the ones that lit our dinners on nights we made it home. 61 When he huddles next to Mother does he dream of his two daughters? The one who took a knife in the side of her stomach and the one who got away? ...