Sea Heaps Up
Sara wants me to read her book. I want to watch the news. We try both. Between pages of Little Bear & Mama Bear making cakes, the story of a soldier home from war. After nights & days of screaming his daughter would pull away & say, You’re not my daddy. He saw the dead in waking dreams walking with his daughter lying on the couch, wordless mouths opening & closing.
Sara presses her hand to my head & pushes back to the page saying, read daddy, read book.
“So Little Bear went all by himself — all by himself in new snow.”
He went for help at the VA hospital but deployment rumors leaked & he locked himself in a room with Death.
After the news Sara molds my face like play-doh until she forms one she knows.