I am older now and better at loving. At least that’s what I wanted to write
on the “where are they now” section of my high school reunion pamphlet. Instead
I said something like, these days I cry and he gets hard. These days no one corrects

the idle beachcombers collecting sand dollars, not realizing they are the skeletons
of sea urchins. What little green you see, their last bit of life. I told them nothing
of my job, but instead mentioned the many hours of traffic spent daydreaming of careening

into the intersection, not for death, but because collision too can be a form of communion.
I wanted them to see that they too could make lights flicker, just by looking.
That this bloodletting would not follow us into our dreams.

And I am not the first person to go missing like this. The years like an immense cloud
of mayflies we kept having to walk through. Always, a dog chained to a fence.
A politician found in a motel bed. Boys catching snakes with bare hands and brown paper bags.

It’s probably true that I was better at loving back then, or at last believing in love.
When believing didn’t require currency or allegiance. Wouldn’t take from you
past what you had to offer. When you could splash in cul-de-sac puddles from swamp rain,

all the while thinking if you drank from them you’d have earth magic.
In the evenings, a razorblade of sky to cut through the swelter, pink and stretched lengthwise
like taffy or anatomy. Even when a group of us found that panther enclosed in the backyard

of a house pressed up against the marsh, and at the time didn’t think of the rules.
The brutality of keeping her closed away. Life up until that point was made to be a series
of quiet fires. A string of senseless cruelties we sometimes took part in.

How later that night we watched the rancher’s daughter brand the horses before bedtime.
How the next morning the horses curtsied before letting her mount. Knowing
that the worst thing she could ever do to them, she has already done.

Jessica Hincapie

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