Soon the rushlights will go out in the flesh of sympathetic bodies once close to my own hand and I will go to my hammock, thinking of little except the numbness that alone makes bearable the wind's twisting. I want atoms to separate like hairs or dust onto the heads of my daughters. I want to violate the edict that traps my hunger in cages and away from her rough shoulder and once to be enough for this and all the loves that flicker through my bedroom before sleep. They keep me awake, and tonight they are fierce as whips or as needles to make the skin crawl. I want to drift like the poui in a southerly wind and settle where I need to before the faces erode, my appetite of iron caulking the egg-shell heart.
From The Blaze of the Poui by Mark McMorris. Copyright © 2003 by Mark McMorris. Reprinted by permission of the University of Georgia Press. All rights reserved.