It doesn’t look like much, it could easily be mistaken for a lump of dirty soap floating and bobbing in the increasingly tepid water. The skin on her upper arm flesh starts the poultry pucker.  The shape is crudely reminiscent of a boat and it floats. Dad’s toy boat. The knife marks are still visible after all this time, roughly whittled it looks like a torpedo or strange nut shell that has been flattened on one end.  It threatens to capsize when she rubs her chilled shoulders. It rights itself and bobs along toward the faucet.  She looks at the clock, she’s been sitting in the bathtub for forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes meditating on the sole inheritance from her father.

8 min @ Manhattanville, Harlem NYC
dip source: The New Yorker, Mar. 20,2017


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