POETRY

By Sheila Black

Go lightly. The way pain enters each day.

Light the candle of flowers that blooms
half-des­ic­cat­ed on the roadside.

South Texas, south San Anto.

The truck was parked through the hot morning.

No one heard the cries that rose from it.
Or rec­og­nized them as cries.

The pur­vey­or on his cell phone in a field
(And this image haunts me more than all the others even—).

The white-yellow-red-black speckled-birds
flew into the sky at the same time.

A bare branch as a form of punctuation.

When the hos­pi­tals flung open their doors and emer­gency bays,
it was too late. They only waited over the blinking

coffee machines. No one felt a single breath of cold,
but every­one wished to.

Go sweetly, the way pain

enters. Or stop and put out a vase of flowers
for them, under­stand­ing in some appalled inti­mate way

how close they were

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 18.

Photo by Caleb Fisher.