We were happy people once. Not naïve, just animated, social, alive. We gathered constantly. We danced at weddings, at birthdays, at no occasion at all.

Dr Summers presses the ignition and the machine whirs to life.

I first heard of aphantasia in a writing workshop – a poet told us she didn’t see visual images in her head. I had always thought everyone didn’t.

When Mom flew off with the Canada geese you made me promise that we would never leave one another.

The little piece of newspaper, crisp and dark with age, flutters out of the gritty space between the fridge and the cabinet. I am cleaning the house while my wife is at school and at first I don’t understand.

We walk from cane fields,
cotton in our nightshirts, sweet

faces on a school bus:
petals of flowers
unopened

midnight sun
a polar bear’s breath
catches fire

today, Christmas Eve,
my granddaughter visiting
her bright eyes – her faith