Northwood. Maryse Meijer

      woman’s voice, laughing with you. I pressed against the

      metal shelf, coat buttons tapping the cereal boxes below.

      Who knew me here, I wondered, was I still a stranger, a

      woman shivering against the Liptons? On the edge of the

      wood it was especially dangerous: the one road with its strip

      of shops, the bar, the dance hall, the gas station, the Feed

      and Seed. Humans. I closed my eyes and heard your heavy

      stride. The breeze your body makes so close to mine. You

      didn’t slow. I had eight dollars in change and a hole in my

      jeans and a fraction of a lover and I felt it, my poverty, how

      little I knew, the limits

      FREEDOM

      Fourth of July barbecue balancing a plate of cake on my

      knees my mother said Remember that time you went to live

      in that old cabin? Laughing in fresh disbelief I never did

      understand why you did that. The mosquitoes whined in my

      ear, chewed their way through my ankles. I looked at a girl in

      the next yard holding a sparkler against the sky; the smell of

      gunpowder, the lethal taste of vodka lemonade. I didn’t say

      a thing. Don’t you? my mother said. Remember? How weird

      you were on the phone and then coming back to gain all

      that weight? The cake slid off the plate, and the dogs lapped

      it up. I was walking to the back door. How cold the empty

      kitchen was. I was actively not remembering. There were no

      parades, in the woods. No firecrackers no dogs no mothers

      no refrigerator hum no beers on ice just my hair gathered

      in his hands and my back bent in the firelight that was the

      time he got in up to the wrist and I stopped breathing. A

      stranger in the woods whistling The Star-Spangled Banner

      as he passed the window we were both amazed there was

      not a single drop of blood when it was over but you’re in the

      kitchen you had too much to drink you were there and now

      you’re here deep breath see? There’s your husband now,

      asking you if there’s an extra jar of hot sauce somewhere

      he can’t find it. You can find it, go outside with him, put the

      jar on the grill, the sun slapping your face afresh, that girl

      still wasting sparklers before it’s even dark the green light

      spitting off into nothing and look, your mother has another

      piece of cake, and a fork, and you’ll eat a bite of it, just a bite,

      and you’ll say how good it is, because it is good, you made it

      yourself.

      HOOD

      You glued together a broken dish. I sat sewing a hole

      on your cuff. The rain

      tapped down the chimney

      smoked