There Came a Soul

After IVAN ALBRIGHT’s Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida She arrived as near to virginal as girls got in those days—i.e., young, the requisite dewy cheek flushed at its own daring. He had hoped for a little more edge. But she held the newspaper rolled like a scepter, his advertisement turned up to prove she was there solely at his bidding—and yet the gold band, the photographs ... a mother, then. He placed her in the old garden chair, the same one he went to evenings when the first tug on the cord sent the bulb swinging like the lamps in the medic’s tent over the wounded, swaddled shapes that moaned each time the Screaming Meemies let loose, their calculated shrieks so far away he thought of crickets—while all around him matted gauze and ether pricked up an itch so bad he could hardly sketch each clean curve of tissue opening. I shut my eyes, walk straight to it. Nothing special but it’s there, wicker fraying under my calming fingers.