Objects Dot Bust / Page 16 of 24


	may God bless us, every one exhausted & suffering from one too many glasses of Christmas chokeberry wine, Dean told his mother the amount of money we’d lost this year. how this big old herd of zeros had burst in the front door, circled the house, & kept right on going out the back. leaving us stunned. breathless. not quite sure how to get the mud from the carpets & the hoof prints from the walls. & she turned on me with astonishment & anger & said “you could have retired. Dean could’ve lived with us forever. helped us work the farm. you could’ve stayed.” every time we leave there are tears. she stands in slippered feet in the snowy driveway, she presses her cheek to the icy airport glass, as if I was taking her son to a battle he was not expected to survive. so I didn’t explain the first 18 years in a 2-stoplight, flat-land flat-minded farm town down by the banks of a muddy river were quite enough & I was neverNeverNEVER gonna stay forever. may God bless the things left unsaid on Christmas. may God bless us, every one.

may God bless us, every one