WILLIAM OLSEN
ROCK
I threw the car keys to Nancy and they flew like a chain gang of birds and landed right in her hand, and a door closed behind her. Then abruptly in my mind, where it had been a long time, was a rock. The size of a foot. By the bed upstairs, in the loft. A rock without a beach or waves, or any purpose I can imagine, since there is no door in the loft that needed propping open. Nancy was off for a drive and I was seated in an arm chair thinking about that rock. Upstairs. How, mornings, when I wake up and turn over and just before the day to come struggles inside my body to lift me out of the bed and out of the night and its stars and calm, the rock is staring at me a little like the lighthouse up the road whose Fresnel lens is missing, leaving it to stare and stare blindly at the lake which isn’t rough anyway. In afterthought the rock looks a little ashamed for me because it has been around for eternities whereas I am just getting out of bed. It’s there right now. It hasn’t moved an inch. I’d like to think you can see it. Which would make you one-part like me. It’s there, again, in a new sentence.