The Maynard
October 2013

Brother

A cozy night-time ride home on the
green bus, reading lights switched on
so I may look at my new book
of Welsh folk songs, and he at
his Iris Murdoch novel, already
read once, and baptized with the affectionate
smears of his fingerprints. I'm going to
read it next. We glide down the silvery
highway, snug among his knapsack, my red
purse, and the shopping bag from
Remenyi. We talk a little and he forgets his
headache and the Prozac which may have
caused it. We recall the soggy roast beef
sandwich of an hour earlier, at the downtown
pub, and he says that everything tastes too salty
to him, oddly, except I thought it was
disgusting too. He didn't try my chocolate
tartufo ice cream, with the raspberry
sorbet centre. He should regret that he never
asked, since I never offered. Another of
Dad's latest puns keeps resurfacing in our
heads, something of delight. We come to the
highway's end, where two passengers get off
the bus and walk into nowhere. I wonder where
they live. We haven't reached the town. It's a
long, dark walk into the suburbs, and this is
only March.