Mark Neely Self-portrait, Poorly Lit Wind bends the double-paned windows, bangs the kitchen door like a busted tambourine. Two years ago an ice storm shut down the city—huge maple limbs cracked and crashed all around our house where we bundled our baby daughter in the dark, held her in a square of warmth around the fireplace while the dogs paced nervously behind. Now she’s three years old. We’ve lost both dogs since then, and two babies, our memories of them like the gray shadows of an ultrasound. My wife and child twist out of the driveway’s mouth. I gulp coffee under a yellow light bulb—trying to throw a few switches in the old, corroded brain— and fill out a medical form in a shivery scrawl: one living child.

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