—for JoAn

When I was five, I got lost in the Goodwill, separated from my mother, and how I wandered through the aisles, my heart a jackhammer, a thousand tambourines in my head, the air a thick paste. Too short to see over the aisle dividers, I sat on the cold cement floor, lost in a dark silence. Lost.... Then I heard my mother’s voice, looked up, and saw her coming toward me. And I experienced a shutter’s glimpse into eternity, a deep knowing that could not be spoken or sustained, but could never be forgotten. For that moment it seemed as though I was the creator of a brighter world, as if I were seeing everything for the first time, the store, the dust floating in the light, my mother, all a joyous new form of life.

I remembered that today when, after my doctor’s appointment, you went for a walk in the rain and came in clutching a bouquet of white and purple wildflowers, your hair wet, your smile crooked. I took the bouquet from you and felt found again.

—From Gilmore’s book in progress, Dharma Box, forthcoming from KYSO Flash in 2018

Bio: Dan Gilmore