shot glass
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"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Krista Genevieve Farris


 

Remember that pancake?

Our son counted down Saturday to Saturday waiting for that breakfast.
He woke sick at sunrise realizing it was there, but he couldn't eat it.

He placed it in the center of his Thomas Track, spit on the ground to make a wending river
when he thought we weren't watching, pushed the train in circles around the cooling island.

He peeled it up with lint and dog hair, put it in a plastic wagon and clu-clunged down the stairs,
put it to his cheek and napped, on the blue couch you called green.

He coddled that thing, dreamed of nibbling a tiny bit. Hope is a noble guard.
We didn't tell him his play made it dirty, that viruses multiplied while he slept–

that he had poisoned it with his own tiny hands.
We sighed at innocence and tossed it that night.

This dream we cart around, that we keep awake and think will sate–
I wish someone would pry it from us when we lie in our bed, our bodies making ruts.