July 3, 2018

a thousand petals are possible *

She was worried there was so little she could do to save anything or anyone,
how a certain darkness had settled in like an old, unwelcome guest,
hogging the dinner table and, later, sprawling grotesquely on the couch to flip
channel after channel. Even when she stole out to the street to
stand under the cherry blossom tree or squint for stars, she could hear
the television humming, see its lurid glow pulsing through the windows.
Her body, whole as it was, felt bloodied, caught on a barbed-wire fence
installed improbably between deserts. It was hard to know where the water was,
or if it was even there. And yet, parched as the air felt, the tree held its leaves, and the sky,
its light. A thousand petals, if she started counting. A thousand stars, if she kept looking. 

* I stole this line from a Facebook post by my friend Jennifer New.