The room is cold, isn’t it? I can hear shuffling on your side, and I wonder if you have the same small window that looks out on the greening yard, filled with distant dandelions that I long to see up close. Some food would be good, too. We haven’t eaten, after all, since that late-night hamburger we shared before the arrest. Midday now, and not even any coffee. They’re breaking me, see. I’m tired and hungry. I trust you, I do, but I want to walk. Or, maybe, I just want to go for a walk. I want to find woods on the far side of the freeway and sit down by an oak tree. I want to repent. I want to believe in you, but the sun’s high in the sky. Too high. And freedom, or at least a scruffy sparrow in the eaves, is calling.
Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she teaches English at Muskingum University. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, Creative Nonfiction, Silk Road Review, Zone 3, and other publications, and she’s the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), The Village (Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).