Space opening up like a rose, me blooming by lightning light. The sinister thing is hunting me in the mountains of Virginia. A sagging porch gives way, and I fall into a dank basement. “I was here” is written on the walls in ginormous neon green spray paint, but the quote is unsigned. Time shimmies in her shift. I have this discombobulated life to live, and my thorns grow inward. In the woods, a predator we the rose faced call, “The Gardener.”

Maps of memory abound with trees. My first breath hangs in a specimen case at a museum. Why all the ravens when even literature, a heavy handed, glimmering thing, runs ragged over a brutal salt mine of a dying culture? On my map, L marks the spot. “L is for loser” the other girl said, looking at my diamond crusted initial necklace. So I cut open my rage and rained on her lagging, unfashionable parade. The first tree you’ll see is the one I used to swing from growing up as a dust bunny in Connecticut. The second is all rich autumn colors in January. Out of the third tree, a cross rises. It cuts open God’s ashen rage and mercy leaks out.