Nothing and no one
moves. Her car is totaled.
She makes out a blur
of bodies—a doe and fawn,
maybe a man
and a small child forming a constellation
splayed on the road. Beyond
the shattered windshield she senses
a vast field, a river
quietly swimming itself through earth.
The only script she locates in her mind
lingers between two worlds.
She wonders about Lazarus.
The bardo. Perhaps he waited too.
She tries to lift a finger—
remembers the precision required to thread a needle.
Notices her breath.
Her body. Still. As though
hanging. From what she's not sure.
A scene of children dressed in red and yellow flames
running headlong into walls
stuns the corners of her thoughts. But in the center,
a room morphs into focus.
It is cold. Windows open
and blue light floods. The room
becomes a theater. Her father appears
upstage left. He is made of glass. Gently
walks downstage. Sits
in a glass chair at a glass table
with glass legs. He is smiling, almost laughing.
Backstage a metronome
pulses. Its echo fills the theater,
saturates the blue light and her glass father.
Everything is porous. How beautiful, she thinks—
the incandescent blue, the windows looking over
and beyond the field swaddling
the swimming river.
Her father reaches for her hand.
The doe and fawn begin
to open their eyes, lift
their heads, shift their stiff, bruised bodies.
Slowly, slowly, they stumble into the field, tall grass swallowing.

Lindsay Rockwell

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