None of the children who died by their own hands were prophets,
but sometimes that summer, lying face down
in the bathtub, baptized in the bass
of a neighbor’s guitar,
I truly believed
we were sharing a dream
I needed to step out of for air.
My grandmother told me as a girl
she’d paint her face with the juice
of lightning bugs. Savage, I thought,
knowing nothing of history, filled jars with grass,
never could capture the night.
award year:
2020