Brendan Constantine
Errata
The smile your father saw in the wallpaper
had nothing to do with your mother. There
were dozens of faces in the flowers, had he
taken the time to look. Many of them were
weeping, buckets of wisteria. Still he was
right to ask for her hand. The scorched
curtain that sent him away five years later,
however, was right on the money. It meant
Take the children. She’d have burned you
in her sleep.
Your grandfather would still be
alive if he hadn’t trusted the gulls. They were
lost when they passed over his boat, nowhere
near land. Your grandma’s vision that night—
the ship’s cat soaking wet at the foot of her
bed—well...that was a kind of grace little seen
anymore. It’s only in the country now, wild
places. The world is too well vetted. We are
proofed to the comma of an eyebrow.
Indeed,
a deep breath has been cut from this evening
in error. Put it back. It comes when you step
from the shower. You need a moment to see
the mirror; the veins of steam forming a shape
beneath your reflection. Let it remind you
of a word & go to bed. Ignore the patterns
in the ceiling. No good can come of them.
Copyright (c)Brendan Constantine, 2005. All rights reserved.
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