Small, seven-years-old, chewed fingernails dug in, baby fat of thighs pressed into thick raised bark, I scrambled up to a crux. There in the
A Blue Morpho, sable and teal, velvet powder flocked on pinned, flightless wings. A monarch, burnt umber and ebony, preserved in a permanent hover.
When the dead speak to me, I ask them to be patient while I mark time in the color guard, legs starched-stiff as my
for Ash and Reid O Breath, hold us in this moment— in the whirr and grind of this old truck’s gears, her straight-six growl,