Providing

Something new from d’Verse! Prosery, 144 words of prose but with a lifted line from a poem within, in this case, from Robert Frost’s Aquainted With the Night: “when far away an interrupted cry” .

 

 

It seems decades ago, when being a provider still meant commuting, late nights at the office, cut throat competition at the conference table.

The bottom fell out and the waters rose. Now I stay always close to my family, their failed provider, but still their protector, on constant vigil, for the want and despair of this tarp and cardboard settlement has made everyone dangerous, capable of acts they never imagined before losing everything.

My wife and child weep from fear and hunger. I know what I have to do. There are still those with plenty, in the barricaded neighborhoods. I will have to go there and beg. Failing that, I will steal.

Determined provider, I’m almost there, the settlement behind me, when far away an interrupted cry turns me around. I run back in terror of what I might find. What stopped her cry?