Ghosts and Empties

suis devenu en quelque sorte une femme qui crie et parce que je ne veux pas être une femme

I have somehow become a woman who yells, and, because I do not want to be a woman who yells, whose little children walk around with frozen, watchful faces, I have taken to lacing on my running shoes after dinner and going out into the twilit streets for a walk, leaving the undressing and sluicing and reading and singing and tucking in of the boys to my husband a man who does not yell.

The neighborhood goes dark as I walk, and a second neighborhood unrolls atop the daytime one. We have few street lights, and those I pass under make my shadow frolic it lags behind me gallops to my feet gambols on ahead. The only other illumination is from the windows in the houses I pass and the moon that orders me to look up look up! Feral cats dart underfoot, bird of paradise flowers poke out of the shadows smells are exhaled into the air oak dust slime mold camphor.

Thanks By

apptech.org