Pat Schneider

There is another way to enter an apple: a worm’s way. The small, round door closes behind her. The world and all its necessities ripen around her like a room. In the sweet marrow of a bone, the maggot does not remember the wingspread of the mother, the green shine of her body, nor even the last breath of the dying deer. I, too, have forgotten how I came here, breathing this sweet wind, drinking rain, encased by the limits of what I can imagine and by a husk of stars.

at the third floor window of the tenement, the street looks shiny. It has been washed and rinsed by rain. Beyond the silver streaks of the streetcar tracks a single streetlight stands in a pool of wet light. It is night. St. Louis. Nineteen forty-seven. I have just come home from the orphanage to stay. Years later, I will be another person. I will almost not remember this summerónot at all. But for nowówith the streetlight reflecting an aura on the wet sidewalk, with dark behind me in the dirty two rooms we call home, for now, I see it all. Tomorrow I will begin to try to forget. But in this moment everything is clear: who I am, where I am, and the clean place that I have left behind. As clear as the streetlight: how distinct its limits in the vast dark and the rain.