The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2009

Soap

Years later, my father would tell her

that while she was away

visiting family overseas

the slowly shrinking soap

became a sacrament

of his loneliness, and how,

when he bathed on the eve

of my mother’s return,

the bar had thinned to

a petal on the lip

of the tub.

Angela Narcisco Torres