sliver

The girl with the crooked leg and the boy with the hands of a man sat under gray t-shirts and sky on a park bench fading. They might have kissed but sat silent instead giving up
the sun.

She liked to sit.

She wasn't crippled when she sat when she sat she
forgot the father-shaped
break
in the bone and how (she knew now)
because he was a coward the break
stayed
and she grew
around
it
and the
snap
of that night and the rhythm
of each
day as she
drug
the foot and
swung
it around with her
round
hip
to hold her
weight
until the strong leg stepped
up to drag
it
again.

"You see that?" He set one of his hands on the leg.

"What?"

"It's crooked," he said.

She felt gravity take her and she could not
recoil.

"The bench. It's crooked."

"No that's just my . . . "

"I think the whole world is crooked," he said. "If the world was right, you'd be walkin' up straight and you'd see how crooked everyone else is."

It was only a sliver, he thought as the last slice of sun
fell.

They sat in silence with his man's hand on the leg until the sliver appeared at the other edge of the world again. She liked to sit.