There is a minnow in the dog’s bowl. He turns and turns unendingly, flashing silver when broadside to the setting sun, finding each next curve as though new to it. Particles of sand in his wake. Grass. Going in circles.
Next to the dog bowl, a camp chair is weighed down by someone. Their right hand holds a threaded needle up against the circle of the glaring sun. Inside-out, jeans lay on the lap, and the left hand is spread open in the pocket. A jagged stitch of blue thread has started crawling its way to shut a seam. But the person does not move.
Their eyes are fixed west at middle distance, where a man-height piece of cardboard stands upright. Sunlight opens around the silhouette of a man as it detaches from the board. Rather than fall flat, buffered by the air, the silhouette’s material transposes to silk. As though hung to the cutout by strings so thin they could not support the weight of the fabric, the shape unfastens, hiccuping and supple, downward.
On the chair, behind the eyes, they feel, in the cavity of their torso, the texture of that detaching fall. All the way down to their toes. It opens the space inside them like a cutout. With the sun, going through.
