My father had a secret. By the time he was ready to talk, 
his voice had turned rough, not like gravel, more like dry leaves
on the pavement, blown about by November wind. 
He touched my shoulder and I leaned in close. 
“Your mother had a lover,” he said. “I didn’t mind, 
it made her happy, gave her some peace even when 
she thought she had caught some dread disease.” 
Everyone knew, she was bad at keeping secrets. 
Every couple months she was sure she was going to die. 
I’d catch her doing little tests to see if she had a brain tumor, 
closing her eyes and trying to touch her fingertips.
“Hey, I can do that,” I’d say, and miss by a mile. 
Sometimes I’d pretend I couldn’t touch my nose, 
poke myself in the eye instead. She’d freak out, 
every time without fail, make me do it over several times 
to prove I wasn’t going to die. 
She read The Science Times every week, articles on medicine. 
Her lover was our doctor and they went to lectures together 
while my dad stayed home, drank gin and smoked cigars. 
He was a gentle, bookish man. 
When I was little, he took me to the library and out for pizza. 
We walked all the way because we didn’t have a car, 
and he told me the story of the Trojan War, how Paris stole Helen, 
all the sacrifice and death. “I’d have let her go,” he said, 
“found a healthy Spartan girl who didn’t make a fuss in the kitchen. 
Good, simple food, a glass of wine, a cigar. 
Then I could read about heroes in an epic poem, quietly in my easy chair.”
                        

My cousin told a story. All the houses were dark, 
maybe it was late, and everyone was asleep. 
Maybe there was another power outage, 
because even the streetlights were off, 
no headlights on the silent cars. 
She called up darkness like water from a well, 
She called it up from deep below the ground 
where we sat and listened as fire crackled 
in a ring of stones. We heard oars lapping 
on the lake, frogs singing in the high reeds. 
Something was coming over the water 
and we were afraid. She told about campers 
in their nylon tent, how they were found 
the next day surrounded by conical holes. 
Their hands were burned, their eyes were gone. 
We whimpered a little and would have clung to her, 
but she looked so strange, so full of dark words. 
She whispered our names, gave us each a blue stone.
The boat’s hull scraped against river sand.
We lay on our bellies as someone walked 
past the house. We were too frightened to move, 
but when we finally slipped down to the shore,
there was no boat, no prints. 
Across the lake, lights flickered again. 
The moon had gone down, stars obscured by clouds.