HARM

                    There is a story of an ancient king whose touch turned
                    everything to gold. You will recognize in me the makings
                    of Midas, except that everything I touch turns to dust.
                                        —Thomas Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, July 1, 1799
 
Maybe I’m the San Andreas fault.
Maybe I’m a big, long crack. Not a girl
but a Sawzall. Because I’m told
I look like the kind of girl who leaves
scars. So maybe I do leave scars. Maybe
I’m made of broken bottles, barbed wire,
& forest fires, quashless & killing
all they can. Maybe I’m the squirrel’s incisors,
gnawing on the figs that fell from the tree
before they could darken & decay in the dirt.
And maybe I want to destroy things— 
like the high-tops hanging from the telephone wire
interrupting the stretch of sky I see
from where I lie on the wet grass, green
with December, watching the wind blow
through the treeleaves. My brother is home
for once, lying beside me, boy who knows my teeth,
jagged like a city skyline, my nails sharp,
nail beds battered, cuticles tattered
as our baby blankets by now. We’re still
in our funeral attire, still thinking
about how our father was once hurt in a crash
on his way to beating my ass for hanging out
with those Babcock boys at the bar
downtown. Like kids, we clasp hands & listen
to the birds sing, keep waiting for them to drop
dead like canaries because we know this life
is lethal: it spurs wildfires, lets leaves fall
& turn parched, leaves us all to dive for cover
from shocks & aftershocks, leaves cracks
in the earth, leaves cracks in us.