for snacks, for sleep, to watch darkened light
plunder the growing thunderheads.
Birds fly in off the tsunamic sea that is hooked
like a rubberband around God’s thumb.
‘Do you hear that sound?’ Tia asks, leaning
her shovel into juicy soil. Nothing from the birds
but the moon, small but good shepherd, screams
against our never-dulled blades. Frogs, the ones
we haven’t dissected in our hurry, waddlecrawl
across sticky leaves we’ve tossed aside.
Blades buzz in the sepia breeze. Tia gets to the ground,
wrists, elbows, triceps, ear. “Here.” She handprints
the pulped dirt. “Here.” I see the scream –
blue holes in my vision – before I feel it gash my throat.
Tia buries her face in the slit shoulder of earth.
It is painful to believe that every rock is sacred because
nothing survives love.
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