Further or Farther

Further or Farther Callie Siskel (bio) In California, my windows are alwaysopen, a kind of porousness I've learnedto accept, that the house across thestreet has heard me scream. Outside, their basset hound is howling. I keepeating my grapefruit. Each segment is aday spent the same way, carving its coralflesh, releasing mist everywhere—juice rising over the brim like the babbling-brook effect the neighbors tried toachieve in their yard. They took a yearto excavate, and once the construction stopped, it rained. The weather used togovern time. Here, it is a day plannerwithout dates. When we postponed thewedding, it felt like getting back a year. My gym teacher told me to run andnever look back. You're slowing yourselfdown. I pull apart a split end and followit back one year, maybe five? I can hear my neighbor showing off the waterfeature to his guest. Apparently, it is aswimming pool, but the water againstthe river rock looks rank and also cold. When my mother offered me the sidestones loose from her engagement ring,I declined. Said no to her wedding dresspreserved for decades in an acid-free box. End Page 40 On my desk: their wedding photo ina box frame, my mother, younger thanI am now, holds a bouquet of liliesarranged on the bias. They are halfway down the aisle, my father mid-stride ina black tuxedo. I tell her I feel fartheraway from the life she had at my age.She says, Further or farther? Do you know the difference? Next to the photo, a vase ofstrawflowers, the water taking on color,accumulating silently like a daughter'srage. Further is figurative, farther is real. End Page 41 Callie Siskel callie siskel is the author of Two Minds, forthcoming from W. W. Norton, and Arctic Revival, selected by Elizabeth Alexander for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and the New York Review of Books. Copyright © 2024 Callie Siskel