I was the girl who jumped first
BY ERIN RODONI
into the sanest danger, from ledges a sensible
length above the creek, tide just high enough
to cover the mundane wreckage
of small town reckless—Chevies and shopping
carts, corpse-cows fat with fermented clover—
down deep where currents creep, quick
and colder. There, sunk in the silt: the girl,
the ghost, the gift, my country spooked
me with. Two towns over, she vanished
from her bed or was rumored rotten
in man-tall grass by moon-licked
railroad tracks. The prologue always
the same: she wandered, she strayed
from. Yes, fear twice removed
is fear. I grew into the girl who never stayed
past curfew. I always drove myself
so I’d never have to owe, or beg
my way. I accelerated out of every turn
in my mother’s roll-prone Jeep. Protected
by a physics I barely grasped, I circled
risk beneath those fog-dulled stars.
I never took a goddamn thing too far.
Time Capsule: The Uneven Field
BY ERIN RODONI
Yes, I went to the field like a virgin to the mouth of a volcano,
meaning I was in love with my ornaments: the jeweled tug at my lobes, the gold
squeeze at my throat. Each pulse, the secret hollow behind
each ear, swooned with sandalwood and slumber. Grasshoppers
slammed themselves against my bare midriff. Yes, I came to gather eyes like moths.
I came despite. I knew the common root
of sacrifice and sacrament. It was a rite of passage, to be named
for the part the beckoned best. Yes, I went to the field like a bride
drunk on dowry, all that worth, all that sparkle in his stare. Yes, I wanted
to be watched, thus christened. Yes, there are men who promise
sunlight in the wrong season, glow enough to grow a girl right up,
and other girls return, shining like the moon, meaning on the other side
of that romanticized light, there is a dark treeline where anything could hide.
Husk of daylight heavening the sky.
Fragrance of wild vines coiling barbed wire, blossoming small white stars
named Jasmine, Honeysuckle. Hush:
the field was a body of water. I learned to float by holding still. The field
was a mirror that returned my body to me through his eyes. No, the field was a body
of water, and I kept sinking through my own reflection. The slightest scramble
between sacred and scared. Aware
suddenly of the cold in my cut-offs and crop-top. Sheer,
the drop. No, I didn’t fall for him.
If I burned, it was for beauty. That plummet through the many-storied night.
