after Ilya Kaminsky
“The calf won’t live past morning.”
The farmer didn’t quite believe that. She ran her fingers along the calf’s snout, brushing the chilly, silver dew from its nostrils. Its red ears flicked against the sound of geese flying low across the fields. She peered into its eyes, all three, and wondered what it would be like to see the world as it was to him, shiny and new and burning.
His mother grazed nearby, looking up only to see that her calf was still breathing, cradled in the farmer’s lap like he was her own child. His eyes tracked the movement of the dawn like a trifecta of sundials. On the edge of the prairie, the world seemed like it continued on forever, like a flat, wide grassy mouth, tinted red as the sun unfurled across the horizon.
She traced the edges of his face, felt his pulse beneath her fingers. This morning, three eyes seemed large enough to swallow every drop of light from the rising sun.
Comentários