Jim Daniels

Next to the screen door work boots dry in the sun. Salt lines map the leather and laces droop like the arms of a new-hire waiting to punch out. The shoe hangs open like the sigh of someone too tired to speak a mouth that can almost breathe. A tear in the leather reveals a shiny steel toe a glimpse of the promise of safety the promise of steel and the years to come.

Each night after reading three books to my two children— we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland, I'd turn off the light and sit between their beds in the wide junk-shop rocker I'd reupholstered blue, still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me, and ask them to talk about the day—we did this, we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now. Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease into sleep's regular rhythm. Grown now, you might've guessed. The past tense solid, unyielding, against the acidic drip of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

Today my son realized someone’s smarter than him. Not me or his mom — he still thinks we know everything — one of the other kids, Nathan. Making fun of him at the computer terminal for screwing up at the math game. Other kids laughing at him. Second grade. I’m never gonna be as smart as him, he says. I’m never gonna be as smart as half my students if we’re talking IQs. He doesn’t want me to explain. He wants me to acknowledge that he’s dumb. He’s lying in bed and taking his glasses off and on, trying to get them perfectly clean for the morning. I’m looking around his dark room for a joke or some decent words to lay on him. His eyes are glassy with almost-tears. Second grade. The world wants to call on him. I take his hand in mine.

at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs clogged with family from out of town spending the night after the wake and the after—wake—cold beverages have been consumed and comfort food, leftovers bulging both the fridge and the mini-fridge. In our fifties, both half-asleep half-awake, we face each other. My sister's smile foams white down her chin at the end of a day on which no one has smiled. We laugh. We may never brush our teeth together again. No mirror down here to see our haggard faces. We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.