In Hiding
This town is river-hungry, filled with dried-up moss and torn blue jeans. It’s hard to find any prettiness here, any shade, much less a place to sit and think. The best I’ve done is Grandfather’s field. Nothing will grow but there are cow bones still to bury. Their flesh dried in the months after almond farmers planted their well. One-thousand- feet-deep, it sucked us dry. Spiders laid eggs in our faucets and instead of water, small brown bodies washed over our hands. Outside is no better. Where flowers once were are ribs and hips. Clouds of flies swarm over them like smoke on a humid day and I remember how beautiful their necks were, bending to eat grass. Bones poked up when the spine arced forward and it was a sword rising from a lake, sharp and still sheathed.