Routine

by RICHARD LEISE

​IMG_0418 by Abigail Batchelder | Flickr

​A toddler falls from a balcony. It takes a moment—there is no commotion, no gathering crowd; there is, after looking up, no sound—but in time (you slowly walk closer until, incredibly, you make out impossible human features, a leg uncertainly angled) you realize that the girl isn’t a garbage bag, that she isn’t a pile of clothing and that, somehow, there, on the sidewalk, like a cat struck by a car, is a child, and not just any child, but that little girl who waves every morning on your walk to work.
​
That she’s alive? This doesn’t cross your mind.     

Earlier.

Read More