Crevices

with Rick Bursky

When I woke up wedged between the bed and the wall, all I could think was that I'd lost the letter H, as in Hollow and Hinder, when I fell. The alphabet was my responsibility. I had already lost K, as in Kitchen and Kindergarten, what would I lose next? In the world between my bed and the wall, gray-black and unfashionable as it was, I found all sorts of possibilities for recovering: old pillows, forgotten underwear. Sooner or later, everything is lost, that’s the beauty of life; the recovering, that’s the sadness. For instance, a man forgets his wife's name every morning for twenty-two years, wakes one day and understands the pain he's caused, then—nothing. Blackness. And the woman at the dinner table decides after twenty-two years their marriage has been a mistake; desperate for something to say, she looks at her husband then down at the silverware, picks up the butter knife and tries to stab herself. But the letter H as in Herself had gone the way of all H’s who find themselves wedged between Glass and Illusion, always chasing Jubilation.