Bedtime Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gwen Wille

same—but it had been so warped and stretched that he couldn ’t make them come together.

Actually he could, but the slightest touch popped them back apart again.

And so, half an hour after he had started, he gave up and put them all back in the cupboard.

And that was when it hit him. Even if they got a new piece now, it would have to go back in that cupboard. Even if she found one— and she would find one, briskly, efficiently, in those early hours before he was even awake—it would eventually go back into the cupboard and be lost to him (if not to her). All he could do was shove them back into that space where they angled and jostled against one another and the rest of the dishes, big lids below and small lids tucked in on the side, always threatening to spill over and knock the drinking glasses to the floor.

He could take them out and throw them all away, but they were hers, really. So many of them had preceded his residence in the house, so who was he to relegate them to the trash? What if a lost lid turned up in the dishwasher or under the kitchen cart? There might still be one that fit, and his rashness would have lost it.

Twenty or thirty pieces. Two people. Ten years. Moderate use. Potlucks, takeout, Christmas cookies from one or the other set of parents. And none of them fit together any more.

He thought about chucking them all and going to the store to get new ones, but then he realized that in another ten years he ’d be right back in the same spot, so why bother? And the next ten years would go by faster than the last—a smaller fraction of a life, after all, a more-or-less quarter versus a more-or-less third. And once another decade had gone by, he would be standing in the same spot looking for lids, wondering where this one had come from, how this other one had gotten so badly mauled, why none of them would fit, and how she kept finding ones that did.

He opened the cupboard again. Cramped kitchen, cramped cupboard, the house itself too small. It had always been too small, though it hadn ’t seemed that way back when they still came together with a satisfying snap on the sofa, at dinner at the kitchen table. When they still fit so well together in the bed, arriving at the same time, the bedtime ritual after the late news and maybe some stupid show with cops and lawyers or a bunch of doctors whose names she could remember but he never could, the do-si-do in and out of the tiny bathroom, the arm that fit beneath the pillow, the nose that fit into the small hollow at the back of the neck, the hips that pressed up into hips from behind. The fit of his dreams and her aspirations, hers still well formed, his scratched and warped and melted and maybe not fit for fitting anywhere anymore.

Laptop, cellphone, camera bag, hard drive. Car keys, office keys, passport, wallet. Toothbrush, medicine, deodorant, toothpaste. Sport coat, rain jacket, winter jacket, sunglasses. Underwear, trousers, jeans, socks, dress shirts, t-shirts, sweater. Manila folders, books, notepads, manuscript. Pocketknife, favorite pen.

J.A. Klemens is a biologist who lives in Philadelphia

Bedtime Story

Gwen Wille

If we tell another day without wasted breath or furtive glances set free from hazy dreams and desire, I could pretend your real life away. Standing on the ledge

with an eye on lamp-lit streets, I’ll hold your hand for that first step into lands hewn from letters or shapes of cobwebs and dew in the eyes of bright

Tigers who measure it out, all even, and name the breeze. And you are once again a World War One flying ace with a shrug to steel wings and I’ m Billy the Kid as I dust off my britches and peek

through the sheet to your unwritten tale: a rhyme unraveling on the crease of a carpet aired out from your soles as you forgive an old line behind the coat and hat of a gentleman ’ s

parade. Here then the pen on your page draws the hem of my smile as poppies fall loose from my tongue, one draught to help you sleep soundly tonight without stolen sight to ever after ’ s addictions.

Gwen lives and works in the West Chester area. She graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2005, and was born in Santa Fe.