Evening Practice

I asked my father, “would you rather die of cancer or a heart attack? Would you rather be executed or put in jail for life? Which would you rather be— a spy or a sentinel?” And he tried to answer honestly, combing his thinning hair with his fingers, thinking of something else. At last he fell silent. I ran out to savor the dregs of dusk playing with my friends in the road that led to the highway. The ball flew up toward day and landed in night. We chanted. Every other minute a truck, summoned by our warnings, brushed past in a gust of light, the driver’s curses muffled by distance: the oncoming wheels were the point of the game, like the scores in chalk or the blood from scuffed knees that we smeared across our faces: so when my mother called, her voice was quaint and stymied and I took all the time in the world trotting home past tarped barbecue pits, past names of lovers filling with sap, past tentative wind from sprinklers: then I was stunned to see my golden window where all faces, hanging plants, dangling pots were framed by night and dwarfed by a ravenous inward-turning light.