You break open the night in a cornfield. The maize stalks hiss as your legs push through them. It is so late: the workers passed you on the walk over while you tried to hitch your eyes to theirs. A week after your father returned from Vietnam, you heard him tell your mother, I don’t know when to cross the street, or where. That summer, locusts hungered in from the west and your body was a knife in every room you entered. When you described to him years later how the fires docked in the fields, your husband flicked his head away to shake free from the roar of your voice. Now you want him to look up, brave your roughness once more, but the field collects the racket you make. The police should come arrest you, battle you down among the stalks as they go pale in the cold stream of the porch light, then deepen to russet again. You no longer answer the door, so when the wind chimes search for you on a still day, you run the prayers your sister said against ghosts over your tongue. The clarity of the plains is a lie. Your husband is at war. A migraine showers through your limbs. Your husband used to crown your head with both his hands to ward off the heat. You cradle it now with hands you believe are not yours. You call this an automatic peace.
-Andrew Inchiosa ’07
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