Nothing will come of nothing, which holds true too for the meager lapels we fashioned from pied and unblinking marigolds, holds true even for the snapdragons yet unready for picking, the golden raspberries, the wooden basin of straw somebody’d named Music. I looked at you; I thought good thoughts; we debated whether that raptor worlds away with its wings outspread was a hawk or a vulture. I sat in a red wagon collating synonyms for forever—silly syntax, old chestnut, bore.
The farm closed down. The sign across the way that reads Peach Tree Court still stands, but the farm itself’s an impression— lines dug into stubborn squares indicating extinction. That corner used to be the eggplant bush, that one the music, the rust-hewn hothouse was the last to go. Bare as well are those places where on nearly every wall someone had plastered once the word BELIEVE. I thought you should know this. Nothing will come of nothing; I thought you should know it all the same.
For selfhood’s sake I will not look back ungently. Blessed be the fertile bins of variegated gourds, dollar apiece and studded apostrophes. Blessed be the beefsteak, the pickle jars, the light behind the ice cream parlor; blessed be my imaginings, their small and bygone houses. We had fun, old friend. Didn’t we? Old pal, old dog, old nobody. I am trying to give up bejeweling bad luck until it looks more like catastrophe. Blessed be the hawk that was not a hawk in the end but a vulture, its long, awesome waltz overhead.
Aaron Magloire is from Queens, New York. His work has appeared in Quarterly West, Boston Review, and elsewhere.
