Ruth stood on the narrow iron bridge, gripping her father’s obsidian necklace, and wondered how many years it would take before the river wore them both down to nothing.

She holds the dice up to me. “For good luck?”

I hungered into that quiet until— there—unbelievable!— a wolf spider scuttled onto a leaf.

Old lungs puffing like gills, I beg to be thrown back to boyhood’s clear waters.