COULD BE ANYWHERE

Alice Ripberger

COULDBEANYWHERE seeps from every seam of siding along with Comfort Food and Help with Homework. I heard Nothing about it before I moved there – an accurate description for what I’ve seen: a whole town sweetly humming under silence.

Coyotes call along the periphery of town lines: both thin and tangled as mama’s hair which is box-dyed the color of the pavement seeped in streetlight: yellowed.

The teacher placed a clear sheet over the other on the projector – coloring the contours and illuminating the answers.

Flicking away the silence that has settled onto my fingertips like snow, I peer at the yellowed transparency pulled over these streets each night, the same one that is pulled over mama’s head to hide her roots, pulled over the elderly books in the public library, pulled over the leaves in autumn before the first frost whisks it away.