Katharina Davoudian
Atlas To save the house, we must change the Law. But the Law grips its fingers around our home, knuckles white, squeezing the walls until they crack. Up on the roof lives Atlas, holding up Father’s lien, his sweat dripping from the ceiling. We are desperate to set him free, to let him eat, to give him sleep. But we watch his bones break, his spine split, and his hands inflame with arthritis. The lien licks its lips as it fattens and fattens with interest, a ticking bomb that will one day slip from Atlas’s fingers. “Father, can you please try to get rid of the lien?” “I won’t do anything until your Mother and I settle.” “Father says he’ll put your name on the house, Mother, then the Law can’t take it away if something happens to him.” “But how can he give me half of nothing? The house is the lien now.”
46 |
antilang. no. 10
