Victoria Sanchez

My left hand digging in my pocket. Three days ago a
Chevy parked outside the garage, waiting for the stars to
bleed into the ready ground. The clouds never rise: they
film the skies white. My hand scooping the wind, shoveling
light to make way. Then the mechanic, the shaking leg, the
loving familiar pain. The truck coughs final. Every arm
snapped—even young—heals slow. But we salvaged scrap.
The heavy hand, the girl. Today, the new sky. The first seen
cloud, the sun going quick. My pockets shrank fast. My
father buried far, my tiny hands big. Sun’s coming, sore
eyes. Don’t look yet.

Brief reprieve, then Junetime. The fledgling wins, just as
it does every year. It rushes back rotten. When the last of
the frost puddles, the bake-skinned child emerges, dumb
again. The echo in my drums again. Elena, Elena.
The once-remit light. I still answer to the name like a
dog. Pluck the petals, bald seeds, worry leaves thin. Each
blinding summer, the re-christening among the spindly paint-
brushes. I, running behind the barn. The dried wheat thins,
the frivolous blooming fields, a round-bellied robin giving
chase. I’m tired of regrowth, the youth, the perpetual
youth, the weeds and the boy with the shade hat. Lying
peacefully atop my dull body, bugs landing heavy on their
feet. I once held out my thumb, one brown eye closed, to blot
out the sun. Just my little hand. Now the light tastes sour. The
barn has grown empty and wet. The mold spread there for
years, I’m told. When they were new, the pricks were clean,
the sweet pear and cacti were shining and sweet. I place it all
again as the light leaked this morning: every frenetic bone,
every tooth-lodged seed, the sun in my skin. Landing any-
where, light refracts broken onto me. Well, I opened my rickety
fridge, the sudden cold relief, the wrinkles wrong. I ate every
cherry, let them bleed in my mouth, putrid, forcing the swallow.