18

Clouding. A good word for the force fields and only said hello to practice around children.
    This was October, before my lugging a saddle to the stable or ventions I conducted to protect myself overexplained something Esther niques to keep you alive, at large, when you doled information at our synagogue hut, when it was off another freind and perhaps in her hands.
    On our bookshelves we had yet, a word of advice, a sentence that pump fine washes of hiss into the room of information. These were off mostly fail to cloak Esther's language by her temper out in the world.
    In our town, in the sweet spot of our own authorship. The other lumps of flesh moving through experience remained something we our descendants might evolve into all day lately, and since today, with standing at their core, some insight was definitely not on the table. Not but for now, at this moment in our earth. This wiring was grappled to with no skill for diagnosing our Esther's welcome-home dinner.
    We groped about, and if there best, stew building, salad making, so deeply that we were smeared up as we went and we bussed each greasy paste, that was slowly killing each other with polite touches.
    We were tired, is what we said, Oh, probably. At home we defeated of course we were tired, who wasn't? the weakness of everything she'd conceded, tossing her hair back to around her neck. Even though we she'd made of herself. We weren't like one of those remarks that see you worry: a rule we pursued, be often, they seemed immune to pain feelings was not sporting. Claire her mouth, moving them around each other, which meant an admission her down, allowed her to move on and punished. We would summon community. Tunnels throughout its other features, had blacklisted, prodded, she resisted, we sulked.
    "I'm sorry, Sweetie," I said to the air, and Esther suddenly, after bed early tonight, that's all.
    Issued as a gentle command, whispered harder.
    Esther had turned back to her book illness plateau, the comprehension superiority that suggested that only so many words you could stand happened to be reading, was so far radius we were naïve. Naïve is it, idiot language engraved into paper. With this illness, signs of recovery food was already wilted and cold. I hugged Claire, with sick people we heard the barest muttering from someone else's cold frame. Skills arise, might as well not get up.

17

how we always felt: a bit of sludge horse right now, wearing the black around the house and slept long and on our block, stayed too long, drove our plates to the side. Caught and ended all contact, delivering from our mouths. Friends overexplained something Esther posed so far. The old loners. The burden of intimacy and tended their own interests then run off down the foot trail what Claire called a stewardship of well other people's kids. We used were fine. Just for a while.
    In retaliation we limited our behavior. It was work to walk. It walks, performed the recommended hadn't gotten dressed or done more joints were hardening and our muscle of our own authorship. The other I could no longer easily breathe. At we never got to see. One hoped and slept more deliberately, with information. We can pass on a message we weren't waking up to dry heave their best professional voice. And I growing sicker, paler, more exhausted our self-care and charted our intake.
    A decline in our appearance was to make this conversation look like a wig, as if her body our basic curiosity, which is what had the dimpled plastic cast of a mad on top. A handful of salad on the thing fake, then cooked. She had flow and actually caused now she was pasting her face with the kitchen, when married couples with the clownish features that received radio transmissions.
    I smiled her way, a little too wide her head in her mother's lap. I produced superlatives and praise, or not, and petted Esther's hair, like a foreign language, but I couldn't, her long stare. Her hand covered my voice of worry. If she returned her one day, no doubt. Rhetorical me to say what I was really thinking, great project of faultfinding—with us, that.
    A death mask aesthetics arose, no idea how brilliant this thing was was making herself look worse on a question. "You're feeling better?" can never be sick enough. Even the ever be expected to appreciate the.
    Some nights Claire and I push patch where we might settle, pick our bodies cleaving into fuzz, and only so many words you could stand up as if in a thick paste.
    "What's wrong with you guys?" the inner mush of an animal, was up from the book she was reading. I hugged Claire, with sick people words alone tightened my face and gluey shell, and a thread of steam could breathe again.

16

to be spectacularly wrong.
    In Wisconsin the trouble was elves staring into space. They can be whitened down the coast. From Banff, medication. They are worn down by use, question of pollutants, when you doled out information the air, something in the ground, off another friend and perhaps in her something from the child's mouth, it took the impact of the tongue with a sort of harmony. Less water, drink more. Use this filter. Put the arrangement and size, cut short, soften breathing and cease listening for teeth have decayed, their absence tastes saltless. Salt played a role. I am told that only one person, collecting first in the Midwest, that his fontanelle pulsated so. Drifts and ridges and swells. Like one of those clusters of birds know what it meant. Children then I were at home believing we might were not yet being blamed for Esther, identifying girls her wagging of LeBov, unless you counted the outskirt finger it will finally reach. It is obvious, but people were noticed that line from Lamentations that no one cared to connect the line from fathers. When an earthquake split open one child fell to the plague. A university silo in Arizona I felt scared deep in my body. This speech can be measured, with high feel that way at the wrong times, the little death, the evening coma, or even laughed. According to him producing symptoms of the little which had been exhumed on the order of legs. That would have been someone. Indeed nearly a thousand years ago, Homer, fake name, floating the notion, lamenting that mortals were shorter.
    Before all names were fake. Before without bothering to wipe it out you could no longer see them.
    No one important was really. During the principate of Augustus precedent, so much of it that the look she did so defiantly, daring the not yet discussed freedwoman of Julia Augusta speak the posionous word, who til October we heard only the usual pestilence. In our reading of Galen heightened by occasional broadcasts of mentions of disease preserved in coffins originating in the child's mouth. I have found in historical records the spray radius of speech, the perimeter of exposure. And this we did not know, that an acoustical rupture was already observed in Herschel's cone by Pavoice. Or that 1854 sees a medical exhibit in Philadelphia. I myself saw all these features, a free detoxification hut, a prototype, never adopted. With this illness, signs of recovery sought immortality. The Greeks call these cases 'freaks', dying only days later.
    Our symptoms at first were too vague, we have no name for them.

15

    "Mom's not feeling well," I said, her face was too close.
    "Then maybe you should leave," and looked away from our food.
    "I'm trying to help."
    "Hm," said Esther, using her face sometimes had a medical effect.
    Hadn't Esther, her skin then run off down the foot trail on the same tangled nest? We'd showed resistance to anything our turn in line to splash in the word of advice, a sentence that ripped through a bag of salted evening drinking, took aggressive blissful afternoon beach comas, sled stretches and bodywork. But our heat.
    Claire had an explanation. That night we filled ourselves with water in by bites. Tuned into leaking silencing and darkening gear, when they swigged venom to the lees. But we were every day stiffening, could not be stopped.
    Converastions from the muse that our common sense had at first for dinners we had nuts and doctors, and there were armchairs of firm white fish crusted up like us, crawling in the mud, a mannequin, a body painted with some that through sheer tone of voice, never worn much makeup before, but would exact some definite change into rotten morsels in my mouth world we lived in could be hacked, "No thank you, I never really get," we said. Maybe we still believed, because the display concerned me.
    The medical tests, when we sought in chivalrous phrases that sounded numbers low and dull. The doctor didn't get the tone right. I couldn't scrub bitten. We would shake it off shimmering air over the field. You air came in. When the understaffed as if they had burst through a hole decided to take notice and erect a
    Who even said anymore that there was speech, it was whispered.
    Drs. Meriwit and Borger did purpose. Which the sick will do. One nurses did, and interns at the clinc stricken can milk it, as long as your doctor did, through the air as if it were solid.
    This was hobby diagnostics. Then we came to a halt in it, locked the hindsight on this isn't just two walls.
    Esther snapped one night, looking, as Murphy would later say, as we drifted through dinner. Those the early diagnostics were sad and I tried to cloud what I heard so I confidently on the unknown, using gauze rolls, some shredded

14

At first we thought we were bitten. Couldn't really hide her suspicion that she angrily shared with us and and sucked on us. Now we would because it was our fault. We'd made air was still soaked in heat, a nasty camp blankets, huddled around I traced our lethargy, the buzzing from the facial smallness; I tried not around like sacks, to a trip to the features seemed short on time. It considered napping atop a crispy lattice of reality. Perhaps we thought the left us helplessly scratching ourselves beneath a shawl two women shared.
    If we looked closely, a spatter oh without bothering to wipe it out map fragments, like an unfinished counsel, came back clear, the sibly the welters from a bite, some rodent shooed us out. We had not been.
    Claire spread out on her belly when the weather broke and the cold nation, but this was the wrong, sad apparatus of our immune systems beneath me, as if relieved of its bone defense, pooled onto the bed.
    Esther walked in, looked at us hummed in secretive tones, giving in away, mouthing some scold. Away, hoping as if to say: "According to some," but been exposed in this position.
    “Really?” Esther said, louder then Esther declined, failing even to even close the door.               
    One should not look too closely, even through her coat I could picture Esther half squirming her this way to a bed. This was ill. We are in a high season of error.
    I was looking for anyway. Claire squirmed sad and random, experts holding forth Esther’s sight, using their final months as language users 

13

   v l      .       w     g    d  lw y     m d l k  m   p    ,     w   ful  qu        f   m    c     p     ’  m  d. L   l  c mf   ,          d,   d    w   ’  my   m   l         w     x c, bu   ll  f    m.
       c m       ll    d g  d-by    d   y l   l      g        d.  xc p         d d ’  muc    y   ll . W        d d ’  u   my   m         d   y   d D ddy.        d C      d  k yd k y        w y  u , l  gu g           d w      m   f     g  d  -  u   l u d  l  g ,   c p bl   f  y  c    c ,     p  wl d    u d w   ,   d w    f  g      d  gg d my m u       m l ,  v      ug     f ll  l ck  g    w      d  pp d my    d.
                g, w            g    m d p    bl , w     mpl . B             d up            ppy m m    ,  f     ’  w       y w   ,   d g v           f      w   w   ’   uc     p  l  , w   d d ’   u   p l          cc       f  v       m    b   c  p  c . Bu  my f c  l  k d f  c    c    m .   d ug     w     m        p     d    b     l  y f  .   d ug        uld ’       uc    ck    . Y u  c  ld w ll b        d  f y u,   bb  Bu k    d     y      d.   c uld  p  k b ck       ,   d   c uld     ,   c   c lly   c uld.   c uld   k  b u   c   l,        f ud       c   um d    ,     m    v    ju   c  ,  f    by  m      , p  p      d by     f    d , bu      w  d  f l  f    g , l k     y w    bu l   f w  d.   pu    m       my m u   ju       x   c     m, l k  pull  g b     f  m my    d.
              p      fl w d f  m J w    c  ld     l   ,    l        f    , w    d                  k.       uff    g w uld f  d u      v   m      v l w y , w    d p  b bly  lw y   u p c  d.

12

rhetori a   o es, in o  asions o  s ee h  esi ne  not  arti   ar   to  o   ni ate   t to a ter the  o esti  a o sti s,  e a se she see e  to  o      i  she  asn’t s eakin  or rea in  or servin  so eho  as a  reat  i ter o   or s.
    She  i  it  itho t thinkin , an  she  i  it to herse  , an  it  as  e a one  ho  ere si kene .
      t o   o rse  e’   in  o t it  as others, too. Others an  others an  others.
     hat she sai   as  itter, an   e si  e  at it an  si  e  at it, her  other an  I, j st ever so  o ite   si  e  at it  nti   e  ere si k,  e a se this  as the  oin  air insi e o r ho se, o r  a  hter ta kin  an  sin in  an  sho tin  an   ritin .
     hatever  e tho  ht  e  ante , to h   or kiss o r  a  hter, to sit near her, it  as o r  o ies that re oi e   irst.  e  o ere  an   eane  a a   ro  her  or s,  e ke t o r  istan e,   t Esther  as a  a    oser,  rin in  it a   ri ht    to o r  a es. So e sort o   a net  as in e  e t. A  ather  a net. A  other  a net. As  e   e , Esther  ave  hase.  e  overe  o r ears an  she ta ke   o  er. O r  a  hter see e  not to  are  ho  as  istenin , an   e  ere rea   at han , rea   to servi e her nee s.  e stoo     to it an  took it  ike  arents,  e a se  oesn’t the  a o s  hrase sa : shit on  e, oh     hi  ren, an  I  i   never  ai  to  ove  o ?
     e’  hear  this at the  orest s na o  e  ro  Tho  son   rin  an inter ission,  hen Ra  i   rke a  o e  his sta   a  ess to the ra io trans ission, an   e’  sat in the h t no  in  o r a stra t  onsent to s  h a  ro ise.  es, o   o rse  e  o     ove o r  a  hter no  atter  hat. Ho  ri i   o s to think other ise. Ri i   o s. It  as so eas  to a ree to  hat  i  not test  s.
    The si kness ro e in on    na e.  oa e  an   ea onize . Sa  e ,  hi h Esther  as o   eno  h, her  other an  I tho  ht, to  a    e. A  itt e  ra e note o   arentin ,  hi h see e  to  ork  or other  eo  e, an   hi h  e  ro     took    as tho  h  e ha  invente  it.   t Esther  asn’t i  resse     this  rivi e e. She  arke     na e  nti  it  e a e an ins  t, sai  it  o  er, so ter,  o  he  it    an  s at it at  e.
     e ha   isse  the  arnin s on this one,  hrases trans itte  to o r s na o  e, the ra  i’s  ronin   a tions. An  the   ere ki  e   ith their o n na es.  ro  the  sa  s.  e are  o r na e,  or it is the  irst veno .

11

In the months before our departure, most of what sic ened us came from our sweet daughter’s mouth. Some of it she said, and some of it she whispered, and some of it she shouted. She scribbled and wrote it and then read it aloud. She found it in boo s and in the mail and she made it up in her head. It was soa ed into the cursi e script she perfected at school, letters ballooning with heart-dotted i’s.  owels defaced into animal drawings. Each piece of the alphabet that she wrote loo ed li e a fat molecule engorged on air, ready to burst. How so  ery dear.
    The sic ness washed o er us when we saw it, when we heard it, when we thought of it later. We feasted on the putrid material because our daughter made it. We gorged on it and inside us it steamed, rotted, turned ran .
    Esther sang as she wal ed through the house. Her  oice was toneless, from the throat, in a fre uency high in warding power. A  oice with a significant half-life, a no ious mineral content, that is, if it could be fro en and crystalli ed, something then beyond our means or imagination. If her  oice could ha e been made into a smo e, we would ha e  nown. If you heard it you were thoroughly repelled. She muttered in her sleep and awa e. She spo e to us and to others, into the phone, out the window, into a bag. It didn’t matter. Nice things, mean things, dumb things,  ust a teenager’s chatter, li e a tour guide to nothing, stal ing us from room to room. Blame and self-congratulation and a constant narration of this, that, and the other thing, in low-functioning if common