Verge

suppose I were to begin by saying that I was a daughter
of weather. that the wind and rain made me into hail

storm. I’d like to admit that somebody loved me once, but 
I’m sure I’d be lying. the mercury in the glass gone old 

and useless, little bulb of dull blood. the trees bend backward 
and maybe it all looks obvious from up there in the sky. 

where the caprock breaks off and chokes on dust, where fog 
crawls across a city—its toothed shapes and streets. it’s not magic 

at all, the way I rinsed all the ash. how I watched it 
swirl down my rusty sink like blood. I killed fruit flies

with my thumbs and blew translucent spiders across 
my bedside table. the earth rose up to meet me like a boundary, 

like some flashy gold frontier, like jagged playground 
equipment. I scream and it sounds like nothing—empty 

drone of a busy highway. I am eased open by a sharpness—
I take a deep breath and hold it. honeyed electricity hums 

from my mouth and this nowhere is translated into thunder.
the clouds are painted scarlet—a great, impossible dune. 

SARA RYAN

Sara Ryan is the author of I Thought There Would Be More Wolves (University of Alaska Press), as well as the chapbooks Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned and Excellent Evidence of Human Activity. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Brevity, the Kenyon Review, and other publications.