Lightwaiting
Each afternoon, the postwoman visits our mailbox. She carries her great sandwich of mail. I want to ask her how she got there. I mean before she fades away. I want to ask her how, exactly, she glows – I mean really glows. A golden light rings her head. But she’s no saint, I think.
The ring is less a halo and more a frame: from her truck, the postwoman emits a half-inch of light that remains wherever she goes. As a kid I believed she was simply solar-powered but then I watched her getting gas, so I stopped believing. Then again, it’s not about the truck. She’s the one with the frame.
In the late afternoon I eat a peanut butter sandwich out on the porch. I spread my chips like an offering. I watch for the postwoman’s truck at the sag of the cul-de-sac. My father budgets his body down the driveway like a loping goat.
I used to love peanut butter until I learned it could kill people. I used to think every stranger had a halo. Now I wonder what it is that runs my father into her, makes him gasp in the crook of her sun.
[sarah] Cavar is a PhD candidate and transMad writer-about-town. Their debut novel, Failure to Comply, is forthcoming with featherproof books (2024). Cavar is editor-in-chief of manywor(l)ds.place and associate editor at Frontier Poetry, and has had work published in CRAFT Literary, Split Lip Magazine, Electric Lit, and elsewhere. www.cavar.club and @cavar on BlueSky