Rubric

Linda Wojtowick

It’s an old story: everything was coming new. Layers on layers of new. New neighborhoods gridding out like dead stars. At new airports tequila was green, snacks vacuum-packed. The clouds pearl-piled. Stores were new; registers silent, smooth as eggs. But not everything could be new. The pool building was unique in that it was neither new nor old; there were parts of each, parts of in-between. Maybe because the water was changed a lot, drained and filled like hands. And that made it seem new; the old water went out and circled around and over again and into itself and was in an odd way always new. One night some old royalty came to the pool. Two kings and a queen. They had seen a lot, their hearts in rags. They looked through the water at the shining tiles. For a while they talked some and thought some about the lands and the wider old world changing around them. And it seemed that for all of life they had each taken for granted their strength. I used to have strings, one of them said. I could fly like a thousand kites through the wind.