Whatever happens happens for the good.

Bean whispered, you could place your hand in a ripe fruit and withdraw a beautiful afternoon. He posed like a peacock, his wingspan electric, glorious in the absence of wings. The hues on his face shifting in snug sunshine. He said, “Whatever happens happens for the good.”

A SCUT OF EARTH BY ELIZABETH KIRSCHNER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 93

The plastic on Grandma’s couch could almost be said to glisten or glow like the weaponry in heaven. Frictionless. As if slicked with some bottle of anointing oil, an ark which preserves the small and distinctly mortal dents the body makes.

We hold onto what we cannot hold. Adorn the sofa with Vaseline, or gold, or polyurethane wrapping. Call it ours even though we don’t own it.

Consider the garden of collards and heirloom tomatoes, Grandma’s long, single braid streaked with gray like a gathering of weather as she clucks down each row.

Grandma falls, her arm angled like a cellist’s, her fists in front of her face, like mine when I was born.

I carry her,…