Coupling

Do you remember when Judy the Therapist was asking about our child’s

loneliness, if we had ever wanted more children, and how we looked

toward one another for the right answer, or for permission to tell the truth,

and I spoke for us and said, It just never happened, and now

it cannot? The sun spilled around the clouds at that moment and made our bodies

glow. Some couples would have believed it was God pulling back a curtain,

opening the window for us. But we did not see God moving

a muscle in the light. I thought of my brother, how I hoped he felt

my protection as a boy, hoped he had never wondered if I was still alive

in the next room, still sitting against the adjoining wall, keeping watch

in the darkness, taking down the name of every intruder for the Day of

Judgment. Do you remember when I told Judy he never calls?

Cyndie Randall's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, DIAGRAM, Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, The Pinch, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. She works as a therapist and lives among the Great Lakes.