The room shrinks and the drain widens. There is only one body and it happens to be yours. I will give you my lead effigy. You will bring me your field of grain. The rye is rusted and there are fleas among the rabbits. That hard breaking-off inside of you. Like the snapping of wood. We hear it approach like a train out on the prairie. But we don’t call it a prairie. That’s too quaint. Hackneyed maybe. Where the grasses overtook the runway after the planes stopped landing. Where the purple Camas Flower peppers the grasses in late spring. Their bulbs. You can roast them and eat them. The Camas Flower looks just like another flower. I can’t recall its name. Their bulbs. You can die if you eat them. You talk about the Cardboard People. I refer to us as Titans. These are the sorts of conversations people have while waiting for trains. The songbird in these parts is black with a red diamond on each wing. Its trill like a reed instrument. Like the sound your eyes make while you’re avoiding your dreams. My hand firm enough on your neck to feel your pulse. The hair on my belly pulled slightly by the curve of your bottom. That’s how it is with Titans. I call you my Sister. I call you my Uncle. The meadowlark torn open to see which heaven its entrails steam up towards. The drain narrows and out on the prairie the power lines snap in the wind and dance among the grasses. The train, no longer able to go forward, rises upward a few fathoms and then stops. Floats there a thousand years. Then crumbles and drifts back down into the grasses.

 

 

Sentence No. 9