Inside the house was heat, yellow-fire lamps, or white evening light from the window. Outside whirled the dust where grackles dove, landing under pear trees. Catfish swam in the pond as frogs died, stone reflected in water. Tiny fish, silver swirling, lost in the dark wake, later writhed in the old stream that turned to dust that drought year, that summer of children pumping water, scarves tied around their mouths. Now is long ago, Oklahoma in August, a fulcrum raging when I drank my hunger back to life. Wind takes dresses off clotheslines, hats off women’s hair. Rusted roofs fly off tin sheds, slicing air, catching on gnarled branches. Touch the door to my old house and you’re in this, too. Red paint peels like skin. You’re here and so are the others you can’t see, touching your face, hands of light and window, hair of tumbleweeds, tongues of feathers, bodies of water. Croplands stretch around dirt roads that take you places you never wanted to go, past the home tracks, anonymous child, no future, no past but what the land brings. My life twists the rain’s path. My father swings from a tree, my mother hangs in a dark closet. Her body becomes a pendulum—the house, a great clock. Her neck snaps under rope, her spine unravels like twine as her heart stops the old gears. Think of the slaughter, bodies long retired to shadow, blood—a blue stain on the tangle of hair. I don’t know all the dead, but I know the dust veiling the backcountry, a film of shed skin. My house was a hideout then, the first time I touched the doorknob and put my fingers through holes in the walls. In the great canyon called darkness, stray voices echo strange like rain in drought season. The first drops might be your imagination, not like everything else in this world past Daddy’s old house, photos of the living, the dead, kept in the dark. I crack a whip, I crack a smile, taking cigarette ashes and eye twitches along with rats’ nests, forgotten dances, leaves rustling over hair. Sometimes, I take on the voice of God in heaven at the street-side chapel—long abandoned, scarred by flame, dust of ages flooded with golden light. At the fallen gate guarded by tumbled headstones, I take your hand, begging you to come back as a child. Your voice is mist rising through wheat. This land is already sold and has been bought a hundred times by men whose skulls cave under dirt. The past is the pasture. Think of me. Alone and unprotected, I joined the wanderers who left everything but the idea of leaving, insects stealing bread in shawl, taking food no one else wanted. Under endless sky, I opened my legs to anyone. Thief in the night, there’s room enough under any rock for the both of us. Dust is a wedding veil, my face bent down to your lips. Put your fingers on my tongue. My mouth is cold and empty. Reach into my throat. I was a girl with long hair, seventeen summers, my heart preserved in a jar of plums, still beating under glass. Think of the silver apples that became my eyes, light touching gray irises like old coins. My nipples withered, dried cherries hung above your door. Take my voice, words falling softly as ashes dusted my wrists, long bones thrown to dogs. Decay is the land’s secret. Longevity is mine. I’ve traveled so far to come back to this place. Think of me at sundown. Taking nothing, I touch you with hands of air. I speak better now that I’m silent.