Some things are damned to erupt like wildfire, windblown, like wild lupine, like wings, one after another leaving the stone-hole in the greenhouse glass. Peak bloom, a brood of blue before firebrand. And though it is late in the season, the bathers, also, obey. One after another, they breathe in and butterfly the surface: mimic white, harvester, spot-celled sister, fed by the spring, the water beneath is cold.
From Temper by Beth Bachmann. Copyright © 2010 by Beth Bachmann. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.