How Text Breaks Down
by Gretchen Mattox
When my brother told me he’d had an affair,
he became one of them.
I asked the day, where is my brother?
It was like that, throwing words away as if they meant nothing.
The wind was a force with its own agenda.
My body was stiff with regret.
Of course, then I dreamed I was living with my father.
My father had plans to improve the place.
It didn’t matter what I felt, what I said.
Gretchen Mattox lives and writes in Fairfax, California.