By Jedediah Smith

After several years of marriage, I filled the bathtub to the very rim with hot water. Stepping into it, I found that the water did not rise or spill over the edge. I called to my wife and said, Look, I displace nothing. I am one with the water. I have found my place at last.

No, she said. Place is not the opposite of displace, and this is not your eureka moment.

The bath will puppy its way back to mother sea without you, or dogs will lap it up, and you will be left dry.

How dense are you that you can be divided by nothing? The only crown you wear is your head which cannot even dent the pillow on my bed.

So saying, she placed her hand on my brow and pressed me under the water. There, I could still hear the voices of children from the playground.

Now, she said, you are not gone because you were never here. I am not alone because you have always been.

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Jedediah Smith recently retired from an instructorship at the City College of San Francisco to a trailer in the desert. His poems and stories have been published in Reed Magazine, Midwest Quarterly, and Flash Fiction Magazine.