Up Against the Wall
Physical, personal, or political—our divides are riddled with cracks.
Image by Sam Cox, via Flickr. There is a bat that lives in my bedroom wall. Every couple of weeks, the bat chirps so loud and long that I cannot sleep. I pound my fists in the place where I hear it singing. I anchor a pan against the wall and beat it with a spoon. I do this until the wall softens beneath my hands, until the paint flakes, until the pan leaves smudged black crescents behind. Until the bat finally goes quiet. Sometimes, if I put my ear to the wall, I can hear it very softly cricketing to itself. That lets me know the bat is not gone, but afraid.
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My parents live in a house an hour and a half away from me, usually empty but for the two of them. Because of the walls, there is no place in the house where you can stand and see them both at once. The
