I was never a girl. Pretty sure I was born full grown. The weight of the world somehow eased in when I was about four or thereabouts, whenever relative cognition set in. It hasn’t eased up since.
The challenge with that is that I never learned to sort it all accordingly, in the correct order. And when challenged, put on the spot, I stall, a deer in the headlights of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler carrying a butt-load of manure.
The heat of August, the hum of cicada has always drawn out a stillness, a pace where I can hear my own rhythm in shallow breathing and a quickening heart. A space between lines where I can think to write.
There are no cicada here, only an unidentifiable thing underlying the heat, an ember quickening, ready to spark.
