Ian M. Anderson

Back and forth, back and forth, together you And I. Back, your eyelids droop; forth, again They falter. Swaying thus we rock into Dreams awaiting you, yet my eyes remain As they were -- and a dream it seems to me. Content as my heart is your breath on my Face, weary as my brow you seem to be. Your legs are slack across my own, and by The sweat beads on your head I know you sleep A deep and peaceful sleep. Golden curls crown Your boyishness -- for its waning I weep. In such thought, sweet and sorrowful, I drown. While over your features my eyes roam, I see, my child, your face is a poem.

Eyes first -- eyes in front, so always eyes first -- and they see and know the cinder blocks, the blind cinder blocks. Yet they also know the 27 pairs of eyes seated around the room. Those eyes dance, and all they've seen and know is much and muchly hidden. Ears. What had they heard today? The long soft roar -- soft roar? Yes, soft -- of the air ducts. When all the mouths are closed, that constant abyss opens to his ears. And empty student words. They are full of desire -- for attention, control, refuge -- but often hollow of all else. Mr. Page smiled at these thoughts and especially at his own hollow chest. A man without a chest. Heads down just now. A few red eyes. A throat is cleared. Some Fruit Loops taken from a bag make a horrid noise followed by crunching. Fingers slide across a book's insides. The year Mr. Page's students were born was his first as an undergrad. That fall brought the escape from one life to another -- an unfettering. The glacier-like closing...

Mrs. Perkins knew how the last five minutes would pass, how they were unlike all the other minutes of each day, how they would drag on and on. She stood at the entrance to the hall with a dish towel over her shoulder and a hand on the doorway to support the rest of her body, which leaned slightly into it. Her other hand hung at her side and waited. It was 3:10, and she knew this afternoon would be like every other afternoon. Yet her chest rose and fell as an inward excitement built up within her; she tried to control her breathing, and sweat beads gathered over her forehead. Her free hand rose and wiped her brow dry. In five minutes, as the clock began to chirp, she would move through the hall, her one hand trailing so as to brush the picture frames with her fingertips, the other thrust into her apron pocket. She would step lightly over the wood floor to maintain the hush of the house, and it would only creak when she was a few paces from the front door. There was no one else to...

Later, when Joe Apis met his wife and children at the park, he would watch an early-waking bee search for pollen on his son's blue jacket sleeve, and it would remind him of the fuzzy buds outside the barber shop. He thought they looked like violet willow leaves wrapped up tight. The stems trembled in the unseasonably warm February air, and the minute tips glowed in the sun. But now, as he sat in the swivel-chair, he looked at the floor where the tiles had been worn away to cement, and just beyond, where the metal curb's geometrical design had been rubbed away. He was pushed around to face the back wall. He liked the black and white picture that hung there, the one of another barber shop showing men waiting for their shaves. The clipper buzzed in his ear, and conversation floated back and forth over his head. A child played a videogame in the seat to his right; the themed music started and restarted. The television behind him was on, he knew, but with no sound -- the peop...

Eck sat at his desk. He noted just then how a beam of sun had passed, shading his blue typewriter a darker blue. The chatter of his son weaved child’s talk into his reverie about light and shadow, dust columns and wrinkled paper. He lifted his hand and let it travel through the slanted division of morning and afternoon. “Da!” The red-faced child crawled around the corner. “I’m sorry, Honey.” Eck’s wife swept the baby off the floor, whispering something about Daddy’s work. Until the stars wheeled into view, he toyed with this phrase: The passage of time is loss.

At 7:00 Warren George woke up and sneezed for ten minutes. In the bathroom, he splashed water on his face until his eyes stopped tearing. He then proceeded to empty his sinuses. Three minutes later, as he looked at himself in the mirror and thought all was well, he began to choke and spit in the sink. It was 7:25 when Warren popped the cap off the first pill bottle. He filled the paper cup to the brim with each handful: levocetirizine, diphenhydramine, odansetron, oxymetazoline, naproxen. Sable, Warren's young bride, sighed and smiled to herself at his cute morning routine.

I’m not sure if it was the long drive through the open fields of green wheat rows, rolling hills, and waves of starlings flying over the road -- or if it was a normal afternoon’s desperation, but there it was: as we pulled into town, the long shadows met us, and I knew I would be restless until sundown. You came home afterward. Remember -- the joy in your voice and the laughter that lifted up behind us as we rode the tandem bike, that child-laughter? The air was so cold that I pulled my sweatshirt hood up over my ears, and our fingers felt brittle on the handlebars. I imagined that your fit of happiness that day was as spontaneous as in your childhood -- all those times when the snow floated down, and you lifted your head to catch it on your tongue. It’s as though I had a glimpse of you then: a recollection of a memory I’ve never had. And later, when the impressions of the rest of the day came trickling back to me, small footsteps quickened my pulse and stole my restless...