I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.
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Jennifer Bowen Hicks’s writing has appeared in Orion and Kenyon Review. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with her two sons and a dog.
The cows showed up just as the world began to end. They were there when I returned to Minnesota from Manhattan, where I’d gone to pick up my older son after his spring 2020 college semester had been canceled.
My friend Gina and I have a pact: Should either of us die unexpectedly, the other will retrieve the shoebox of sex toys hidden in the deceased’s closet.
We need constant proof that we’re not alone. And if we don’t see a companion, we strain to hear one in the dark. And when there is no whistle in return? I’m here to tell you, we will make one up.