The Other Thing

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.