One, I state to myself.
There are no rules.
A pigeon is a kite if she wishes.
In an orange sky, a yawn turns daybreak into night — if the eyes get teary enough.
I am blind in the night. I am blind in the day.
I could stare, unseeing, for millennia and nothing should ever fade away.
Two. It rests better in the mouth.
To fatten the skyline with canopied crowns.
Until, in mid-afternoon, the shades of a dying sun withdraw.
Two, I ponder, is also the number, if squared, becomes death.
I stare at my morning oats.
They are filled with dried fruits and seeds and stuff.
I stir and I stir, thinking of the sky.
Little clouds. Smoke signals.
They’re spinning days and into little bugs and little beans.
I want life back. I want it all.
Greed is not a number— it grows and festers and calms and swells.
I tend to mine like my moldy bread.
A rotten log. Abandoned, forgotten, yet it spreads.
Two hundred acres. I pause.
Before the wind, there was silence.
Outside, I hear voices crying.
Even after the char, there were chimes of glass shards striking against grain.
The heat is unbearable today.
Someone, please save the children, but dear God, please don’t make it be me.
Now, thirteen thousand six-hundred ninety acres.
I try to think of any number greater.
All around is an immense crackling.
The fascia of our land is aflame.
The smoldering smell of laurel sumac whipped away.
The word “survival” comes to mind.
When does need become want? What do I want more than I need?
I need the clean smell of sage in the land with dreamy lichen curtains.
The soft kuk-kuk-kuk of the dove blends with the ashen melt.
The raspy aye-aye of scrub-jays aflight in chorus.
Farewell, my beautiful world.
If someone else can see my life, it makes her pain a little less like make-believe.
I think I may have lived after all.
Dear sky, please let me survive. Just one more night.
-Michelle So
Illustration courtesy of Lu Arie.