rationality a fleeting thing something lost after the birdshad long since flown as the telephone lines were stillfinding their footing once when the rattling was nothingbut an inconvenience wearing a trench coat the six-o-clock news warned usto anchor our televisions that a boy had become pinnedbetween a screen and a hard place since then I only ever listened with one earso I could hear it coming because you will hear it coming if you are quickto recognize the throat of the land gurgling behind hills and under pasturesand some people write the sound to be akin to a stomach sick with hungerafter the evening has washed over or the thrashing of a whale’slargest limb splintering a vessel and who could blame the creaturestill giving us plenty of warning that we were simply caught in the wrong currentand I must have won the lottery this morning planted on the verandanot hypnotized by the caroling advertisements on televisionwhen my mother tracked the movement outside weaving between thistles and bulbsas though a spider bolting through a weblunging her knees into trodden soil her robe damp from the morning not yet liftedpleading to the mouth of the land taking in the silenceteething and relentless shooing a battery of blackbirds away frombranches making a mess of the telephone lines and if you ask meI think it sounds like a roaring win of an opposing teamtwo fists belting across a chest a splitting sternumfractured and puncturing so here rationality could only ever bea fleeting thing rolling around as a marble in our palmsbecause as her chest fell towards the throbbing wound my motherasked me to fetch her sewing kit as though whatever lay buriedwas not yet dead

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