GOOD LUNGS

KRISTIN LAFOLLETTE

The first time I truly understood
the rain water smell of wet earth,
 
it was a cave, the silence interrupted
by the dripping of
                                    the water, the
 
moisture running from the rocks.
The wide opening into the sun was
 
a box of light, like looking through
a lens, extending out into
 
wildflowers
 
that were children. I saw a path I have
walked and will walk, a place where
 
I almost stepped into an open pool
of water in the ground—
 
Consumed—
 
The way I feel as my hands come
together and the old cells fall to
 
                                     the floor.
 
The way I remember my father
in a black suit. The way I remember
 
a woman with
 
                                                blue
 
eyes and a garden tended by her
            husband.
 
The way I remember a girl named
after the way trees bend in the wind,
 
a film projection of her life,
the stinging of rubbing alcohol as
 
it is absorbed by small wounds in
the skin.

∘∘∘