Further Adventures in the Restless Universe

Скачать

After the rains had come and gone, we went down by the reservoir. No one was watching, or so it looked to us.

The night was like to drown us.

Our voices were high — his, mine; soft, bright — and this was not the all of it (when is it ever?).

Damp in the palm, unauthorized, young: We would never be caught, let alone apprehended, one by the other.

“Orion, over there. ” He was misunderstood; that’s what the boy told me. “Only the belt. The body won’t show until winter,” he said. “Arms and such.”

Me, I could not find the belt, not to save my life, I said.

Flattened with want: “There is always another time,” he said.

He died, that boy. Light years! And here I am: a mother, witness, a raiser of a boy.

I could tell you his name.

I could and would not.

“Here’s where the world begins,” he said. I see him now — unbroken still; our naked eyes turning to legends, the dirt beneath us parched.

The woman is awake now. She opens her purse.