by Laura Hatch
On Sunday mornings the bishop’s wife does not stay in bed
while her husband attends early morning meetings.
She does not let the children play the Wii while she
reads a book of poetry. She would never lay
in a hammock and listen to the squirrels gossiping
and the cardinals chattering. She would not take a long bath
just for the feel of the heat on her skin. The bishop’s wife
doesn’t imagine what it would be like to instead put on jeans
frayed at the ankles, no shoes, no bra. She certainly wouldn’t
drop the children at the chapel for Sunday services then
peel out of the parking lot and drive and drive and drive and
drive, stopping at every scenic lookout and rustic market
dotting the highway, until she glimpsed the ocean. She couldn’t
swerve off the main road, skid through the dune grass, park
her minivan at the top of a hill, slide down to the shore,
strip naked on the sand, wade into the foam until
she dissolved into flotsam to be scattered
by the waves, burst into whale spray, washed upon
a rocky beach, picked up by a barefoot
stranger and tucked into a pocket or tossed
back to sea. She never closes her eyes for just
a moment and pretends she is nothing, there is nothing
she has to be.
Laura Hatch is an MFA Candidate at Texas State University, where she teaches Composition. She has been the recipient of the Norman Peterson and Charles Mosely Endowment at Texas State and twice the recipient of the Texas State Graduate College Liberal Arts Scholarship.