They say a screen memory is something less
terrible covering something more awful.
From the screen porch, where Big Flo sits fanning herself,
emerges the vista of field where world meets its edge.
She is my great-aunt for whom is named
my mother and my sister’s daughter (I have no daughter).
The horizon draws too intimate to touch, worse than sex
(I have no daughter, but I do have screens,
a house made of screens) and in that field my cousin was shot
by her father (but if I speak of that death the screen condenses
too small and curled tight to write). The last time I heard her voice
(or was it the voice of water) saying I love you was summer
or is that a screen memory? Every summer the summer gets hotter,
and I remember when I was pregnant
deciding not to listen. The screen porch would shake in thunderstorms,
and Big Flo would hold up her hand, Stop.
Rain shapes a screen between the forest and house,
between the north and south.
Years earlier, I was the chosen of my father
(I could never have a daughter, never
trust myself to save her.) On the screen porch,
rain and night at last break the heat, the small leaves breathe.
From Magicicada (Unicorn Press, 2024) by Claire Millikin. Copyright © 2024 by Claire Millikin. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.