The Dissonance of Wrens

The Dissonance of Wrens Grilled latticework and mesh wire are not the easiest things to pull your daughter from. Packs of dust will eat you both, and she will moan and stare as tendons from your shoulders snap like willow twigs from your front yard. The sky will be like garland, and you will want to take it down and throw it to her like a drift cord. All that before a rescue comes, and the realm of dirt and over-sized Lego pieces dissolves. And your daughter will become another gown-girl, another patient horizontal on her bed. She’ll stare at you, pupils like the blue wash of TV, perhaps seeing things like bone shards and hands open palmed in the detritus, feet behind awnings as if playing a game of hide-and-seek with the hands they love. Red cashmere patterns will adorn your mouths like route-ways on a map. Ears bound tightly like her first popsicle stick project, she will rise to touch you. Your chest will kiss her fingertips, stitches side-stepping each other like the zipper of a garment bag, her arms held the way she might once have said “Want some cheese sticks?”, and you will realize some things are close. Closer than close. Closer than yesterday when you thought the dusk was a kind of rain. Tangible like tar. Now you see when the blind take off their dark glasses at night, there is a difference that they know. That when the earth intaglio’s the sun, the earth will turn. That though her new found dissonance is vast, she could share it with you like the biggest bowl of Chex Mix. And now outside, wrens express concern five or six along the cities mile. Nurses turn off lights.