wildscape. literary journal

Object Permanence
by Erin O’Regan White

My son and I have a running joke — human life 
is a simulation and the fog that shrouds 
our hill hides a master developer. It runs an update,
re-renders textures, tweaks features,
adds new quests. Does not fix bugs. 
     
This morning, the fog seems alive,
a brumous body that slips between lampposts
and warps the wide street toward mystery. 
What we knew is shaped into questions. 
Does the driveway end

where we remember an ending? Will we 
find the bus stop beyond the curb? We imagine
the thrill — a step from foggy sidewalk that lands 
in candy colors, speaking trees, a Dalí-drawn
reality. Anyway

we play this game, my kid and I.
Beneath our play is longing, a wish
to shape a new reality into being or 
at least answer some questions — 
the big burners, the ones that creep 

into night-dark minds, that drip
into the crags and pits of stone-cold fact. 
Our play is a bond, a distraction 
from the wound we share — the one 
that’s settled, the one we don’t discuss,

the one that murks about like mist and splits 
old truth from new.

about the author // Erin O’Regan White