And while she despairs over the impossibility of looking everywhere at once—into every teeming passageway, every gloomy pocket gone unchallenged by the daylight—she loses precious time by looking nowhere at all. Seconds, then minutes, slip away in paralysis, and inside this terrible stillness, her mind begins to wander. She remembers him as a baby, how while in her arms he would kick out his legs and stretch to his full length, his feet finding purchase in her still soft belly, his face turned skyward, exposing the tender underside of his chin. She had to make the decision over and over again. Weaken her grip and he would take flight, hold tight and she would exhaust herself in the fight.

Korena Di Roma Howley is a writer and editor based in Bozeman, Montana.

<<             >>