Between 0 and 1

For Savannah Guthrie

Somewhere, a field holds the hollow shape of a grave
with no body.

I dug it in my mind the day masked men tore
my brother-in-law from his storefront and dragged him into a waiting car—
the sky unwoken, streets folding tight around him.

Then the silence—thick as swamp mud, closing over my breath.

Why does the mind refuse an empty room?
It furnishes the dark: a mattress thin as paper,
a rope knotted to a chair, bruises blooming
across his thinning body, a single bulb swinging its tired moon.

In the shadows, Schrödinger’s cat curls beside him, both alive and dead.

My phone remains on full volume; each ring clicks against my skull,
a cylinder spinning—one bullet in its chamber, one fragile chance whirling in the dark.

Hope whittles down
to one percent—
the rest swallowed by shadows.

But between 0 and 1 lies infinity—
0.1,
0.01,
0.001…
each decimal holds endless probabilities
between two realities.

So I wait in the space between 0 and 1,
until the field yields:
        a grave returned to earth,
        or a body to fill it.

*

Sharon Tung is originally from South Africa and now lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two children. Her poetry has appeared in Literary Mama.