Saturday, September 23
from ALLEGORY During the plague, which has become a way of life, I collected the ends of bars of Ivory soap, worn too thin for bathing or hand-washing, but useful maybe later when things like soap begin to disappear off grocery shelves, or what’s left of the money dries up. I imagine tethering the scraps together with rubber bands I’ve saved and lassoed to the glass door handle that leads to the attic. One long winter of the plague a raccoon lived there, in the attic. I could hear its claws as it wandered in circles over my head. My ceiling, its floor. I know you’ve lived it, too. You understand that you can cross a hundred bridges but there is no way to go north again, by which I mean it’s time to put to bed, like the row of the giant’s children in their matching nightcaps, our allegories of innocence. (Diane Seuss)