“Peter Periwinkle had a car accident,”
my brother said,
as if reading it aloud
from the back
of a cereal box.
It took me three full seconds
to realize
he meant our father.
We were on my grandma’s farm
where she had recently died,
leaving chickens scratching
unknowingly in the dust.
Our father was elsewhere—
broken, back bent like a paperclip,
drunk at the wheel
when the other car...
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