You thought you’d get away with it:
Choking ships in the slanted sheets of your wind-blown rage
or teasing starving farmers, a dry cloud scattering shadows
over browning maize. You planted loneliness
into planks of houses, stroking windows with feigned sympathy
as every neighbor’s neighbor peered out into your grayness,
foreheads pressed against glass. And they came to me,
begging me to send you, begging me to send you away.
Freewill is the dark freckled droplets abandoned on desert sand
and the bloated bodies of rats in flooded basements.
I saw it all.
And this morning, as night diffused into pale blue,
I found you cupping cattails in your palms, whispering
into leaves of willow trees. Blackbirds stirred in their nests
as you soundlessly rolled over bark into brackish water.
Even that. I saw that, too.
Heather Allen was born in Holt, Michigan, but is currently living in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been previously published in The Central Review and The Blue Route.