A father throws a baby into the air. Beside him an old desk dries on a mat of wet
paper. Soon the father will begin a second coat of midnight. He thinks of how children
draw fish against backdrops of blue light, as if water reflected only cloudless noons,
the carp arcing up no different than the pelican splashing through. The father’s aquarium
is yellow and muddied. The minnows, dead. In the stream where he found them, they wasted
their lives fighting currents. His baby, too, lived months in dark fluid. When the father
paints he wonders not what thoughts his son will one day write nor whose photos he’ll set
here, framed beside some pencil case, but which color shall come next, after midnight has
chipped off and his no longer airborn heir wets his own brush.