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.