the madison review
Seven Types of Caring John Belk
I. I first loved a fish: the oily iridescence and overlocked scales; the always-quenched thirst. I didn’t have a word for it, but it was love. II. I have grown into making new homes in the rounded corners of the folds of my mind. There is an ocean of earth between me and the thickened summer of my childhood, but sometimes I return by smell of lilac or hum of fattened bee. I wonder at dreams of the dead: the bruises on her arms, gasoline, a quickened tremble of fingers or a deliberately missed word. And I dream in perfect language— of conjuring protections and phraseless winter evenings and the violence of everything. III. When I was ten I gave a girl honeysuckle and magnolia blossom for her birthday and daydreamed of endless affection. When I was seven, a tree fell on a barn. There is no one word for anything—a worry, a box of gauze, a test. When I was five my Uncle wept for love he no longer had .IV. Grandmother’s yard was filled with wild onions and hornets and partly-torn-down washing machines from before Grandfather died In summer, I would fall asleep outside, intimate and soft-warmed by sun. Happiness, because I had no other language for
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