Night Soul and Other Stories

I did not need to die in my own country; and then I did not die at all.

I must read only children’s books (Mandelstam writes),

Cherish only children’s thoughts,

Scatter all big things far and wide,

Rise up from the deep-rooted sadness.

I know what he means, but…

Employment: that’s number one right now…

What is my job? The future. Helping this boy…

The Bridge in pieces and angles of itself—adrift like our seasons.

Ali—I thought of him, if I could save him, but from what? And there he is in the doorway when his uncle—for how did I know it was that irritable, nephew-loving atlas of learning long-legged, a fugitive back home where life at noon like mission accomplished might cost nothing to cancel—swerving off the cement path toward a lone forsythia bush fell headlong tripped up it seemed by a pistol shot’s synchrony and slow-legged into silence as natural as anything?

What is my job? To see what a child is seeing

Seasons sometimes like minutes if you’re ready.

“Shakira,” adding, “You people have the greatest names.” “Debit or credit?” is the reply I deserve. “You ladies here at the register.”

He even told his Sharah bedtime stories out of that game (or truthfully that the designer had stolen).

Da Vinci those call him who think that was his name, said uncle, who confirmed that Leonardo had set out to move a river. Nomads would not do that. They would cross it.

“Gone,” I find the word to answer him, a nine-year-old. He suddenly becomes my friend.