There is a promise of trees, a wet child running through fire, his feet fixed like roots to the stage of her palm. There is a dream there, a fissure worth remembering, a petal that presses the way memories do, toward the surface.
Bend, Oregon. 1994.
The river running slow, her wrists learning how to fly. She sits like a fractured harp creating this story that is an echo, a last offering, a compass rose.
A trick of light, his brown hands covered in charcoal and fish scales. His hands covered with love. Bodies come slowly here to sleep, where they are lost inside their love of waist-high light, the trap door of an ankle, the myth that lies at the rim of her skirt. He can almost smell her ruin before it arrives.
Her overripe star collapsing under and weathervane. The little girl, with stories buried in the root of a ghost, in the thick vein of a knotted fist, in the flower open and bowing.
The little girl, remembers.
She escapes through soot, through the cocoon of a tangled house. This story is a snare.
The child is on fire. The girl burns still.
