It frightens me to think, she said, interrupting
my holiday banter. Imagining the phrase
as antecedent to a rare gift of honest exchange
between grown-up siblings, I dashed
into the split second of dead air, anticipating silently
her elaboration— what a mess we've made of things
for our kids— how many parents of starving
children must hate us for our amazing prosperity
and self-indulgence.
                                But I had misread
her punctuation, took the period as a pause and all
at once found myself, like that coyote
we used to pull for Saturday mornings, utterly
without purchase, eyeballing an abyss.