We Inherit What the Fires Left by William Evans

Author:William Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

BEFORE: GOOD NEIGHBORS

Dear Neighbors, as I rise before your sun, running

past your homes on my morning penance, knowing

every break in the sidewalk, knowing where you

have hidden dawn for another hour, know

that I no longer come in peace as much as I have

been here for some age, when frost was writing her

name on our cars and mailboxes and before that,

when you left your leaves for the animals to nest

under, I know what it means to fall, not as a single

piece, but a collective scatter, where my remains are

given to wind and crunched underfoot, if you ever

wondered, we always end in the street, before

giving up on being whole, yes, you’ve seen my

labored breath on the second mile, perhaps your

lights are motion-sensored or you were waiting for

me, your cat no longer flinches from my path, and I

think what it must mean to see something that can

absolutely ruin you and not be compelled to move

from its steps, maybe I am a harmless creature

now, maybe you will never need to call the police

on me again for morning jogs, where I must have

been running from something and I was,

every day is a half-flung benediction, but I jogged

with my daughter, and you remarked she must be two years

older than she actually is, and I knew the sun was

still setting, I knew the night had other designs on

our bodies, you should see the claws I grow before

a hunt, you should see the fur and the teeth and the

way a doe gives me its last breath, this is why I rise

so early to run now, when the crickets are awake

and verbose with song, I hear them because I am

them like any good myth, heard in my most known

form, a renewable fable and never truly seen.

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