Sublime

Hannah wraps her arms around herself and squeezes, imagines comforting her mother, her mother’s arms comforting her in return.

and down; he

Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen and The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry.

Des Moines

ETHEREAL ENIGMAS,

from hat to shoe

used to tease Russell about anthropomorphizing clocks and lamps, for treating the flea market like his personal orphanage. He believed in the souls of objects. It’s where so much of his emotion lived, in these annexes of textiles and glassware, the miscellany of other people’s lives. Items without a home made him restless. It was not enough for you

father and a mother, presumably. Or, more realistically, simply a man and a woman.

The kettle is aluminum, of a type that has surely been outlawed. Just looking at it gives Nell cancer, but an unspoken rule says that it must never be discarded. The cover will fit only if placed just right: Nell marked the position years ago, with two circles of pink nail polish, one on the lid, a corresponding one on the kettle itself, which must