Christopher Thomas The Sweet Waiting Even as a child you could hear music where others saw only dead leaves, found mystical kingdoms when others spotted only ruts in the alley or weeds sprouting in the radish patch. By the time you reached the age of five, you were convinced everything you saw was holy or at least part of the divine dance. No one in your family knew what you were talking about, so you stopped talking. You took to listening and kept notes in your mind. Each season became a collage of symphonies, magical happenings, and colors that lit your way with explanations of the strange porosity direction has. You grew up among men who spit tobacco and cheated on their wives, boys who thought only of cars, football and Suzie Martinelli. You hid out in the woods, listened to its secrets until deer ate from your hands. In high school you tried harder to fit in. You joined the band and almost every church in town. It didn’t help. The music teacher didn’t like individual expression and God never seemed to filter past the stained glass windows. Only one thing got you through alive. Literature. Books and an English teacher named Patty became your best friends. You ran away after that thinking the military would fit you back into the mold your little town kept demanding. Instead you learned obedience and the strange science of crawling under enemy fire. One night on bivouac, you heard music coming from a pile of dry leaves. No one noticed. You smiled all cozy in your cocoon and resumed my the sweet waiting. Winner of Gertrude’s $25 Editors’ Choice Award