Protection

BY HEATHER SELLERS

I woke with a dream of many flamingoes, flying low, landing en masse, all walking now
gently towards my house.

I went to Publix for noodles and Dawn.

I stopped at Fatima’s Alterations to pick up the tunic whose sleeve I tore, raising my arm
quickly and urgently in the city.

I looked away from the manatee in the bayou, on its back in the toxic water, whiskers
wavering as in mood song, breathing.

A young umbrella tree grew from the gutter over the back door, just out of my reach on the old ladder.

From the driveway, I watched the black felt sky turn to obsidian, as evening and storm
came together quickly, outlining my loneliness.

That’s when I noticed the I caladiums planted just last week, slender black fingernails
pierced from the dirt, shining in the rain, curling come, this way, this way.

Heather Sellers is the author of You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, an Oprah Book-of-the-Month Club selection and Editor’s Choice at the New York Times Book Review, and featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Dick Gordon’s The Story, Dateline Medical Mysteries, The Today Show, and Good Morning America. Georgia Under Water is her collection of short stories. She’s published two books of poetry, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses and The Boys I Borrow. Her books on writing include Page after Page, Chapter after Chapter, and The Practice of Creative Writing, newly out in its third edition. Recent essays appear in Tin House, Good Housekeeping, O, The Sun, Five Points, Parade, Reader’s Digest, The New York Times, as well as The Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays 2017.

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