It was time for him to take his early glass of milk. Which meant 6:48, two minutes after the morning piss, and three minutes after the hornet buzz of the alarm, every day the same comfort; he turned the radio on just after he swallowed the milk. The radio was the changing thing, the same time every day, and always news stories of the troubles and hurts of the planet, with sometimes a piece about a movie or book or play, or something about how people got their lives back together after the flood, after the storm, after the son who died in gunfire. The news changed, as did the light in the windows, a thunder dark morning or the stab of snowy winter sunlight. But the fact of the radio remained the same, even as the deaths and locations of the gunfire differed. Even the anchorman was mostly the same, his voice a comforting weight. He drank his milk from his son’s glass, a jelly jar embossed with a faded blue pig—Little Boy Blue with a porcine face. Later, the mid-morning gulp of water from the same well-loved cup.

 

 

 

Robert McDonald’s first book of poems, "A Streetlight That's Been Told It Used to Be the Moon," is coming from Press in 2026. His work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Marrow, Gyroscope Roadside Review, and The Madrid Review, among others. He lives with his husband in Chicago.