By Dan Hodgson
Someday somebody you don’t know, a stranger, will approach you, will come up to you in front of your house, on your way to school, perhaps in the woods heading to grandma’s, somewhere you don’t expect, always when you are alone, and that stranger will say in a voice so friendly you’ll think it yours, hey, kid, I have something for you, and you’ll feel their warmth and your want, and they’ll say, come a little closer, I have something to give you, and you’ll be pulled in even as they pull back their overcoat or let show their big teeth or reach with their chipped nails, and they’ll say, just a little closer, kid, and you’ll jump to their voice even as their hand shoots too fast out towards you, and they’ll whisper, here, and you’ll smell wine or is it honey on their breath as they touch to your fingers a figure finely carved from a dream, painted shades of you by an artist, a stranger, somebody you don’t know, a gift for you omming assurances you are not alone here but here surrounded by so many of you so many of you many of you of you of you you you….
You know that story you were told as a kid:
Dan Hodgson writes and teaches. With his wife, he also chases their son and daughter up traprock peaks. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Baltimore Review; The Southampton Review Online; Cease, Cows; and Quarterly West.
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