Sarah Elkins

Still Life with the Same Dimple

I snapped the photo because the three mugs in the foreground—
one orange, one blue, one green—just filled with steaming venison chili,
talked amongst themselves in the false incandescence of midwinter. 

They were bird chatter, throwing sparks at the heirloom tomatoes,
halved avocado, white tube of Chapstick, tub of Daisy sour cream,
red Rubbermaid lids and us. Only now I see my son standing 

in the distance of the photo. His gaze lowered, avoiding the lens—
Venus born a boy. His mouth clamped shut.
There is a photo from the 70s, around the time of my birth, 

of my father, enlisted in the Army, in the driver’s seat of a Jeep,
arm casual on the steering wheel as if there’s nowhere to be.
He’s making the same expression, mouth flexed so the dimple 

in his left cheek punctuates his face. What do either of them have
to be sorry about yet? My son’s shoulders grow past the yoke of his shirt;
neck, chest and bicep thicker all of a sudden; his fist shoved 

into a jeans pocket. I remember the sting of thirteen, canker mouth,
how I would say to a new friend My dad isn’t really in the picture.
We invent games, my son and I, with our made-up language 

and we win. He plays a chord on the piano and asks What’s the feeling?
I say, sad or scared, happy or mad. When he plays a happy-sad note
I call it nostalgia, but he doesn’t know that sound yet. He asks, 

What day of the week is seven times seven equals forty-nine? Thursday,
of course, I tell him, and he laughs because that’s the right answer.
So, when I ask what month the mugs are and he says May, I know 

he can hear them bickering, the doe snorting. Hasn’t spring always been
a fight? What’s astounding is how much of my father is in the shot—
the silent apology he’s been offering since before I needed it.

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Sarah Elkins lives in southern West Virginia. Her work is forthcoming from or has appeared in Cimarron Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Quarterly West, Baltimore Review, West Trestle Review, Porter House Review and elsewhere. Recently nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Sarah holds an MFA from Pacific University. Find her at SarahElkins.com.