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Jacob Bathanti

Hurricane Faye in Your Bedroom Mirror

I think: we shouldn’t be here. But also: the way the flooded road winds lovely and shines now; the way the trees dance, branches’ hands clapping; the way the clouds were moving three days ago, high and fast, arrow-thin in the sky over the Gulf. If we had left we could be at your mother’s house in Candor, North Carolina. It’s still just peach season, and we would buy them by the basketful, from old men who know your last name, whose faces are lined like peach pits. There, the sky is clear and hot and colorless. Here, the power’s out and you’ve lit candles:

this frame holds: your face, pale,
weary, our hands, holding, the sheets
of flickering rain