by G. J. Sanford
She is held in the grip of a lathe called indecision. She is neither cedar
nor mahogany, and awaits the tools of her destruction—or refinement,
depending on who you ask. At the stockyard she is a sorry heap,
a show for those with more structure or discipline, states of being
she is unfamiliar with. She has broken so many chisels and saw blades.
She has developed a small reputation for this and begs everyone
to see these moments as accidental. At night she lies naked in the moss
by the old mill, listens to the dead whine of the wheel and laughs
at her inability to choose one thing over another, one future for one dream.
She tends to embrace the wood ant’s trespass, but the wasps ignore her
display. There have been so many summers she couldn’t predict
would betray her. with time she’s learned who to remember,
which names to forget. But in her mind, everyone she knows
now seems to stand so tall, so secure in their bodies; their bark.