Slewfoot Sprawls
I.
It’s a pixel pasture
where words graze, bold
as black-eyed susans in the ditch.
Click. Send. Throat tight
as a jar of canned juice.
I’ve mapped this distance:
two blue dots on a screen,
glowing like foxfire in the evendark.
II.
Growth of green so hungry, it swallows
the steep incline out my window
And up– up– past the high road
to where the electronic church bell
tones the passing hours.
I trace your voice in the static:
“Someday,” you say.
We accept this benediction.
III.
We don’t speak of the bodies
we’ve been: screen-bright ghosts.
A laugh spills
through the speaker, sudden
as persimmons falling in the road
on KY Highway 1295.
I let the signal slick the silence
between us. My chest sprawls
wide as a field after rain–
then contracts
as it should.
IV.
Tonight, my porch bulb’s yolk-light
sprawls on wet concrete. I’m learning
to hold space
for myself again—steady,
no flinch.
V.
Let the world call this small.
Let it name me unfurling—
you: tendril, tendon. Me: tender
and terrible.
Your pixel sun spills gold
on my oxygen tank. But look: the fireflies
stitch the breathless dark between us.
VI.
We are becoming
barnlight on broken glass,
debris spilling toward a creek
that remembers nothing
but motion.
Come over, I’d say.
Bring your hands—
we’d stain them
with tobacco and tar.
We’d navigate
that labor later.
