mason

When the world was spinning they pushed my hand into the hand of a girl and she took me to a room with a red bulb. magazine photos of women.dirty sheets.shelf (empty glass.Our Lady of Sorros.plastic flowers.book with torn spine). She said, You are not normal. I didn’t say anything. I was busy cataloging her sorrows. There was Abandonment.Loneliness.Love.Violence, she wore them on her face. She touched me. I said nothing.waited.watched her move, a movement between a ship at sea and grass swaying, above weeping and below laughter. (Daniel Mason, “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth,” in Harper’s Magazine, April 2005, p. 80)