The last questions will be the first ones, undiminished,
persistent. And when we conjure them again, the same
cold wind will lift the elm and maple boughs and scatter
red and yellow leaves among the browning fields. A dog
will bark, we’ll lose sight of the sun, crows will seem the size
of pterodons. Childhoods will return to us, pouncing
from the weeds like feral, shin-high beasts, more noise than shape,
more fear than comfort. We will be saddened or relieved
to have survived them, amazed that they’ve survived our best
survival tool: forgetting. Through the brittle winters,
the thickest heat, our skin is still the skin that broke
out into air and light, our envelope, our shield.
Electricity, despair, unyielding incomprehension,
the sudden tearing that is love or the lack of it.
We’ve come farther than we thought it possible to think.
Originally published in Cider Press Review, Volume 1.
