Poem: An Air Story

She was small, and liked to touch the "shy" ferns

that closed their leaves to her hands like magic.

They were going to see the rocky mountains,

so she chose: the shirt with rough-drawn birds of paradise,

then another over that because mountains were cold,

the one with the lion, thick gold paint not yet outworn

and definitely the pink and purple jacket

that had broken every wind it had met.

Their car tilted up, and drove,

slow dragged its contents through teething rock,

then leaping turbulence of earth, carved road,

strange silence of vacation.

Cold wind was everywhere when they got out,

finding and pulling, pushing every open place on the body

and every place she thought was closed. She needed mom arms

to keep the wind from pulling her right through her thin jacket.

Tourist dad photographed the embrace:

two tropics girls, cold, hold the rock on the mountain,

the spirit of the air with his swift tufted cloud-tail

tearing dark bird's nest pieces from under their headbands.

And the cold smell--it was running

through her face straight to her brain, pulling and

telling her what could be hers:

messy hair meant free,

meant her own dragon steed with ice-blue eyes--

and then she realized her feet had left the ground,

though she never said goodbye to her parents--

meant boundless birdlike sight of boundless

atmospheres past the fall-away line

on the horizon, expanding immoderate self with

god-breath until--as she probably should have known--

chilling expiration, dumped

at the edge of a crevasse eons from home,

feeling strangely withered, her hair fallen

ragged around her shoulders.

Years later, she will realize

just what it was he took from her.

Copyright ©2008 Sarah Bronson