Blessing Time

Emily Koehn

I broke time in half because it didn’t matter. I took photos on my phone of my daughter’s hand my hand my grandmother’s hand. I carried phone lines out to the farm and then made calls, kept the phone in my pocket, tied my thoughts back through the window. I stopped and had lunch with my grandmother on her farm on my way to LA and she said, those 10-lane highways oh my oh my. I stumbled over my peas and carrots and smiled and never returned. I didn’t return to the photos of the hands with their furrowed knuckles. I keep them stored but the clouds already look like this, hands all over a sky, clenching at the probability of blue. But it’s luminescence that I see while driving, staring at the cut of woods, making that tree so distinct it’s really the light the low temperature. That something can shimmer up like that, a leaf, the glowing of what. I want it then, time, make the grandmother the daughter the all of it a blessing in disguise trying to hold it with their fingers and whatever hand I touch I think I could know her. That any highway will not be smarter than a grandmother. A dash a road to return the turn of sky the line a highway something like that a second. Detect our brief hour all dried up in this, no, her land.

 

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