Nine Hundred and Forty

Nine hundred and forty, Mireya says. And some that were not whole.

You look at the jar. The green swells and fades.

Ten of these, she says, and the tape down here could go off. Nobody has asked me for ten.

She turns her head back. The headlamp finds the jar, the bench goes yellow and flat, and the jar is only a jar.

You look at the cable where it ends in its clamp on the copper. That is for tonight, she says. An hour before dusk the grackles leave the antenna on the roof, and for eleven minutes it sends a broadcast. Tonight the broadcast comes down here to the copper for the first time. I am staying for that. Darius goes up to the roof garden most evenings to watch the lightning bugs come up from the creek. He thinks if he can write down what they do, it can go in the broadcast.