She had to laugh the day the
power
went out at the house-
the next morning she found
a possum had drowned
in their swimming pool.
Before she found it
she had spent the night
placing candles
in every room of the
house.
She lit them one by one
with the same electric lighter
he would use to light the grill
during the summer. He hadn't
been coming home
at his usual hour, said he had
to work late.
She believed it
until the day the phone rang
at the house,
a woman's voice said
"I need to come clean..."
There was no point in making
a scene over it,
at least that's what she told
herself.
When all the candles were lit
she walked into the front yard,
admiring the glow
of genuine warmth
radiating from the windows,
as if the house had been turned
into a massive jack-o-lantern.
When she went inside
she wondered about what night
must have been like
in past centuries,
how foreboding distant sounds
and rustlings must have been
in a world more callous than
our own.
She went upstairs, changed,
and waited for him to come.
Her eyes began to tire,
her mind began to close up shop.
She was at the beach with her father
and saw the vast and terrible
expanse
as they stood there on the sand.
She held his hand as tightly
as her small fingers would allow.
"This is the edge of the
ocean.
The water goes on and on
for many, many miles.
There are people on the other side
who are different than us,
who speak a different language
but we all share the same
water,"
he said. She understood as best
she could at that time.
How insignificant she felt
when confronted
with the scale of ourselves
against our home. On the edge
of the horizon
she could have sworn she
saw a seagull fall from the sky.
The candles had all gone out
when she woke. She turned
the TV on to see if the power
was back, it flicked to life
and she quickly turned it back
off.
A fine mist covered the
neighborhood
as she stepped into the yard
to grab the morning paper.
His car was nowhere to be seen.
She went into the kitchen
and put on a pot of coffee
so she could drink
while reading the news.
She grabbed a clean mug
from the rack by the sink
and looked out the window,
something was floating in the pool
near the edge. She stood there
staring at the dead creature
and its furless tail. She went
inside
and had her coffee,
read her newspaper.
When she was done she went
upstairs
and packed a couple of bags
of clothes and other small
possessions.
She placed them in her car
and went to the backyard.
It was still floating there like a
flesh
and furred cork. She crouched
and grabbed it by the tail and
pulled it
from the water. She held it aloft
until most of the water had
finished dripping
from its body. She walked upstairs
and placed it in the middle of the
bed.
She pulled out a pen and paper
from the nightstand and jotted
something down. She placed
the note next to the new guest.
She went downstairs and through
the front door without bothering
to lock it.
She put the car in gear and
backed out,
looking both ways to make sure
there was no oncoming traffic.
