Here Be the Signs

The first flash is of an idea: to 
begin, crunch the dates—maybe 
eleven, maybe twenty—in spring, 
and if you entered  talking (who 
doesn’t?), you are my friend. 
Watch the illness then, on 
the drive over. From early 
on. Everything abstract stayed 
separated, your child can’t 
remember you and is by 
early June seated against 
the loneliness of stone.


From each of the first lines of the first ten stories in The Angel on the Roof, by Russell Banks.