The Missouri Review

38 THEMISSOURIREVIEW HEIGHTS / Judith Minty 1. Falling, hanging by my feet upside down from the basement stairs. My mother at the ironing board, her back turned, the cry for help falling from my mouth. So close I could almost touch her, she would not turn. 2. My friend flew in the minister's bed, a bird drifting over ice floes. He woke when he urinated, ten years old, ashamed. 3. When he was a boy in Muskegon, my husband climbed Pigeon Hill and jumped, hovered before sand thudded up, the grains fuzzing like down on his skin. The dune is flat now, hauled away by the boatload and sold. 4. Another time, I stood at the top of the stairs, arms spread out, and stepped off. Judith Minty 39 Flying is floating, I did to the bottom. No one saw. I never could do it again. 5. At Mont Blanc, steps carved out of ice. Snow fell all day up there. We hung skis over our shoulders and clung to the rope as we climbed, held ourselves from looking down the crevasse. 6. We grow afraid to speak of it, forget that we wore capes once, and leaped from swings in the backyard. We close our fists and fall away. 7. When the Wallenda pyramid broke, the family floated in feathers to the circus floor. Karl, the old man, still walks the cable, sometimes between hotels in Florida. We tilt our heads back to study the tiny steps, we whisper perverse words of flight. 40 THE MISSOURI REVIEW WOUNDS / Judith Minty She has been bleeding for ten days in Mexico. Ashamed to speak of it, she follows the coastline with him and covers her wound, stops it up like a crack in a seawall. Smiling, touching his hand, she pretends there is no sickness in her belly, in that ocean where I swam. She walks the shore with him, drives through dusty towns and climbs cathedral steps. She prays to the child and weeps for nails in hands and feet. Today in the kitchen, "Oh Christ," I cut my finger. I bound it to stop the bleeding and told my daughter it was nothing. In my sleep I am crying. Nightmares cannot be stopped up. There is a child in a boat. The boat is sinking, slipping into the water. There is no one to hear. The water is red, a sacrifice. ...