Paradise
Andy Stallings
He’d imagined they’d lie on
the grass and whisper, not sit
in the kitchen and cry. The
pines were always quiet, calm
to observe. Wind arranged
the boughs, and beneath
them there was music, if
you’d call the irritable
squabbling of children music,
and I would. But the
windows didn’t open, not for
me, or not for long. A habit
of hoping for particular
outcomes even in realms of
chance. A blue morning. I
take the eggs from the carton
and scramble the interiors,
discarding the shells. I say
blue, but it isn’t. “Oh,” says
the toddler, “Oh, right.”