During the storm,
the empty swingset rattles with fury in the air—the same discordant sound
the malignant liquid in her body made before the mercy,
the same clawing sound
of a frightened beast’s nails against the raw of its captors. There was a child in it
two hours ago, the little one,
her feet dangling over the gravel, her mind
fixated on the soaring and nothing else,
the sensation of being only a pendulum to the universe,
divined back and forth over the fallen bits of tree
that the sky spit out when the rain stopped.
Before the storm
there is a blanket of warm red light
spread over the yard. This happened in Arizona
too, back when I was that child—I used to think it meant
Mars was going to crash into the surface of the planet
and take all life with it, the final deserved cataclysm,
my family reduced to bitter, cherry-tinted meat floating alone
in the cruelty of space. I was told, of course,
that my imagination was going to get me in trouble eventually,
that I was ticking down the days until impact, that my self-destruction
was inevitable.
After the storm
I watch the pink skies, the clouds darkening
to a blood as they flutter across the atmosphere, closing in on me,
tracking me down, ready to pour the spilled-over stew of my scattered mind
all across the land. I try
not to compare it to anything else.