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Sean Reagan

A Story

It's Easter - early - before the kids are up - and I'm writing a story. In it, a man wants to burn his neighbor's barn down. The reason he doesn't is he's scared to hurt the dog who sometimes sleeps there. It's fiction but not really. My father and John Stevens built the barn in the early seventies. The dog, Bridget, was shot behind it a few years later. Maybe it's fiction. The phone rings, waking my daughter. It's my mother calling, I can tell by how happy Sophia sounds answering. Conflagration has always been my favorite word. She brings me the phone quickly which means that something's wrong. I take it, even though the story isn't finished.

My father's body curled like a question mark on late winter snow