dcJohn, "ball and glove," 2005
The ball was as big as the sun and smelled like glove oil, and leather, and fresh cut grass, and I could barely hold it in my too-large mitt. The sound, when it hit the pocket just right—a soft cough of air; a single, hollow-palmed clap. My dad, smiling, happy, playing catch with me. He’s receding now, that memory pulling away like a stagehand’s trick curtain, overlaid with news of children who’re as old as I was then (maybe six, seven) all sobbing for their mommas, their dads, children tossed up into bright desert air, falling among strangers in a nightmare game of catch.