Neighbor Children When Mine Are Gone by Erika Hall In Nigerian-tinted English John and Paul are playing in their bedroom on the other side of my bedroom wall: John is dying, aahhh! Save him, save him! until Paul let’s out his normal deep-gut-baby-squeal-laugh and they change to being cowboys, inside today, because of the rain. Their mother is tall and black and proud and dresses impeccably, their father too. On the other side of my children's bedroom wall, where there’s a bed, but no children, is where the parents sleep and sometimes when I hear Paul whimper in the night from a dream, if she comes to sooth him I think of going to sleep in the empty room, of trying the sounds on the other side of that wall, but I don’t— I listen for Paul—because John sleeps quiet, and when I hear him I put my hand on the wall and whisper shhhhhhhhhhh, little one, shhhhhhhhhhh I can even hear the water swooshing in the bathtub when they bathe. Tomorrow when the sun comes they will go to the sandbox again where I will see them from my courtyard and wish I could do something like hug them, the strong young black boys, worlds in their palms.