by Tim Gilmore, 1/20/2024
I saw you once holding an injured chicken sideways to your breasts. You ran at the dog that had the chicken in its jaws and wrenched away the bleeding bird. You stood there on the unpainted back deckboards, loving something hurt.
I don’t recall if that were before or after your father shot all the stray cats your mother fed. I don’t remember if he’d already shot the television set. When I told my father what your father had done, he laughed. He laughed. I guess we loved each other against the world.
Your father brought home an old wheelchair for your sisters to play in. Toward the end of my mother’s life, a wheelchair had been her prison.
Later your father collected dozens of kinds of African violets.
