When You are Everywhere
BY Katie Jean Shinkle
We see Marquis and Father everywhere, all over the city, at the intersection in their truck laughing running fingers through each others’ hair and laughing with their heads cocked back and singing singing singing at the top of their lungs to unknown tunes that disappear behind bass lines before we can even recognize the song. We see them everywhere in reflections, in the windows, all of the windows of every single building that owns the skyline from anywhere we stand.
When we get lost, we look to the sky.
We see our Father in the reflections of glass windows.
Our Mother procures stainless steel rabbit ears in the dumpster, sees them spilling out onto the road, sees the extension cord (that works, might I add she says) and knows it is rabbit-eared antennas for the TV. We sneak out into the living room the first night and watch a television show about ghost hunting. We learn about axe murders who want their human counterparts out of their houses, we learn about explosions that killed so many men, we learn that children’s voices are normally evil spirits manipulating to gain access to human energy. We learn that ghost hunting is about spirituality, not about physical manifestations.
We see our Father in our tandem dream that night and we say, “Why did you leave us?” and he says, “I didn’t, really.”
M.E. Riley reads "When You are Everywhere"
Katie Jean Shinkle is author of three chapbooks, most recently The Sadness of July (dancing girl press, 2012) and As Close to Smiling as You Can Get (The Cupboard, forthcoming.) Other work can be found in or is forthcoming from Third Coast, Sonora Review, Salt Hill, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.