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. |