Rosita Benson
-- The Boy Is Only Hiding -The boy is only hiding in the man, grizzled and bearded, taking blood-pressure pills and glucosamine chondroitin to further the disguise. But catch him in a photograph with the forty-two-inch thirty-four-pound striped bass he brought in wild from the ocean surf, then the boy is exposed in a flash behind the scrim of age the way the sun burns through the mist. God of Potential Things Believe in a god of potential things? I do. For who but such a god would deign to read the soul of scales, scraped clean of fish, no longer bound to skin or shape, appreciate their aptitude to dry and flake and curve much like a sail, having at last freedom to fly, and give them wind? Ironing The half-empty laundry basket mocks the shrinking universe of her care. Shirts were her specialty. Now her single blouse is a splinter in her hand. With a gentle tug, she removes it. Like a rite of communion, she raises the linen skyward, folds its shoulders back, lays the double-layered yoke up-side down along its lower stitches. Left to right, she presses this horizontal line parallel to the board edge, pats it top to bottom with water, then, with a pound of iron, heaves her weight into what her husband used to call her no nonsense tough love attack. Flushed at the remembrance, she smiles as the crease steams, lets her hand hover over the heat. Take Away That’s what children call subtraction. Four take away three is one. Neat and tidy. The whole world knows. Two fried chickens in Mechanicsville or two poulets sautees in Aix-en-Provence if you and your friends eat three legs for lunch, no matter what, one remains. Some say God takes away. Felicity was taken away last month. Kenny in March. Jehovah, aka lymphoma, lung cancer. Two take away two is zero, a hole, an erasure in your address book. Take away the place settings. In high school, I liked the magic of algebra, x and y unknown. Unseen. While you watched the top hat, I’d shake the answer out of my sleeve. But my favorite was that labyrinth of faith: geometry. You enter knowing someone has been there before you. Step by step, you follow; step by step, you prove.
* Previously published in The Westchester Review