Octavio Solis’s Reviews > Jack > Status Update

There was a Wednesday, or it became a Wednesday as he washed and dressed and buffed his shoes, and walked out into a world oddly untransformed. Miracles leave no trace.

Those handkerchiefs, white, identical except for the tiny mending his mother made in them where the fabric might wear through. No telling which one had wiped sweat off the face of the woman dying in labor, which one had blotted an orphan’s tears. When his father took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe milk from Jack’s chin, it felt like an induction into intolerable mysteries. He did not let himself inhale.