Altitude
She could drive herself a gentle crazy, spin
her wheels off the pavement, fling the gravel
close enough to hear waves.
Ask her.
She’ll tell you what happened, what clings
like burdock, pushing aside the brush with cuffs
still damp in the rainy pines. You’ll feel the
orange heat of backyard burning.
You’ll learn to get by, do without, become your own
statement, one more untried change of soul
and try to write it down, but only up to its heels
in apprehension.
She’ll sleep in cotton underwear, clutching
a pillow pulled to her hips and thighs and thinks
I don’t want him
to be
just around.
She’ll write in notebooks at the edge of morning sleep
voices
when the cat with delicate paws on the flannel sheet
kneads her breast awake.
And the fog burns off in yellow sun.
And she’ll watch for something shaped in
linguistic fear. It begs
to be left out, let out
to circumnavigate
the pulmonary ache of rare atmosphere.
She could hold radiant firebrick in gloved
hands, let the pyrometric heat warm her face.
Fragile children touch her knees.