Perilous

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Susan Bumps is the mom of of a five-year-old son, Alex. Her work has appeared in The Santa Barbara Review and in the anthologies Bite to Eat Place and A Ghost at Heart's Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. She is actually a less anxious Mom than she thought she'd be.

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At first she thinks handkerchief. Something white and untethered. Then the feeling of panic. The height. Bobby's white shirt. She can't see him. God, where is Bobby? She reaches down unconsciously for his hair, slightly coarse from unwash, the slight bump where he fell off the couch as a baby. Her hand touches air. "Bobby!" she calls, her voice unnaturally high. Only the air. Only the wind throwing her words back to her. Only the perilous view from this old stagecoach road, the ocean down below, the Catalina Islands. She nears closer to the edge, notices the drop away isn't that steep after all. "Bobby," she yells again. "I here," says a small voice. He is playing over by the rocks, she sees. Perfectly fine. The something white again. A gull. Just a gull. It hovers on an air current. Falls away.

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