Vignette

 

In summers, when I could still call myself a child,
I waited for the clouds to stop their growth spurt.

Crashing against each other like children into mothers,
They began to mutter their claustrophobia.

Knowing, then, that the bursting was inevitable,
I removed my shoes and shorts and pulled out my pigtails.

I was ready to run, a wild child in her animal element;
My footsteps sprinting slap slap slap on pebbley pavement.

As a giant, my toes broke beaches of silt in the greenness
Beneath the sentinel line of maples which canopied me

And, barefoot, I danced in the rivulets of washout gullies.
I used to cackle with the clouds, them at me, I at them,

But before the first shock could come I was scolded for her worry:
my mother’s intuition beckoned me back.

She let me stand, beaded and dripping, nose pressed to the screen door,
To smell the mirage of ozone off the cul-de-sac.