catapult magazine

For Yeshua

by Michelle Julianne Gallagher

You lie on your stomach
In black, sun dripping shirt;
Idly drawing shapes and boxes,
Houses and people
Between the lines of your book.
I am next to you, sitting on the blanket:
Comfortable silence.
“Who are you?” you suddenly ask
And I am taken aback.
Answers like crazy eights
Shuffle through my head
And I wonder which you’d like the best.
Then I stop: shrug, sigh, and shake my head.
I tell you about my brothers and sisters,
About swinging in the park,
And about walking down red dirt roads by the sea.

You, of all people,
Seem perfectly content with that.