There
exists one
singular sheet of
paper taped to the
strip of #808080 concrete dividing
two sections of white wall. It
undulates, like a ribbon fastened to a
branch on a crisp day. Logically and physically
this feat is hard to explain, for the windows
are closed and the fan is still. In cases such
as this, it is best to appeal not to
logic or physics but to the heart. The
paper has a tear streaking in from
the west, a blue remembrance of
the two seconds and one
lifetime that it took
to rip the
child from
its
household. I
can still see
my mother’s hand, extended
into the invisible, expanding void
between us which in six minutes
might have been someone else’s void breached
by someone else’s hand. A corner of the
torn paper twists slightly upward, exposing pure white in
a feeble gesture that accomplishes nothing at all. The tape
of artificial lime holds firm, and the face I
show to the world shines with little tears
which trickle inward from my boundaries. Will
my suffering never end? This is
the question I ask as
I look out into
the expanses of
white and
think
about the
moment, some number
of moments ago, when
I might have placed a
piece differently, and dodged the estrangement
which promises to gnaw new tears past
my perimeter for the rest of a lifetime.