Paradiso

That scene in your favorite movie, the one where the boy has ditched his one errand and escaped through the side door into the cinema: of course he has forgotten the milk, the bread, the pullet, the eggs— the rest of the market list. The everyday sun rolls itself uphill as always, through the humid air. Let the carpenter drive nails into the wood, the baker snatch the loaves from the fire, the seamstress mend the panels that have come undone. When he slips back into the street, it’s dusk; the leaves look twice as big for their shadows— dark as olives, pits hard as hearts that have not leached their bitterness. And his mother, sails billowing like a galleon, has cuffed him on the ear: this is how they head home, one tugging, one pulling, the neighbors shaking their heads or laughing along the way. The plaza retracts to the size of a postage stamp: someday this will all have a different flavor, linger on the mouth like a memory of forbidden kisses.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.