Practical Gods
PHOTOGRAPH BY CASSIE BUTLER TIMPY
The evening sun reflects off our blue birdbath, the memory of afternoon rain, as the day’s end is marked on an empty wall; the leaky gutter still crying, inconsolable — like a mother who has just found, or lost, her only child (a fact I only mention because, from our bed, it always seems to be raining). There is no point to this: my wife does not want a child; the weather does not reflect unknown desire. If she were home, I would undress her in the cooling light, the tears from the willows glistening on her skin. But she is in a different season, and I am here alone. What would happen next, I will not say. You should know that the blue birdbath has the slightest of cracks and is always glazed with rain — make what you want of it. There is only one robin that visits our yard — her breast its own sunset. At dusk she hops from puddle to puddle — listening. — Terry L. Kennedy
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Terry L. Kennedy — author the chapbook Until the Clouds Shatter the Light That Plates Our Lives — teaches at UNCG, where he is the associate director of the graduate program in creative writing and editor of the online journal storySouth. July2013 2013 •O.Henry August Salt 7575