The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/The Child

Written by
Sal Cetrano

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URL: http://prmlr.us/mr13cet2

For years I’ve tried to bury the child in me: that last proud barber pole I stood in front of as a boy, the new housing project, chain-lined walks, blacktop sweat, poverty just a spelling word. To rate responsibility, I’ve tried to rid myself of selfish evasion. It’s just as well that I move to Nepal! Someone believes, someone bleeds. A girl bolts screaming from bed, her hands pathetic wild birds, a wooden man plods from the house of his single mind. At such times, when the cover is torn off catalog comforts and nothing grown seems full, the child sliding head-first into home, center of a good idea, dustily rises, clear on the score, and the words that passed for life go in one ear and out the other, a naughty habit never broken.