"The Coldening" by Kelly Gray

The leaving was such that each apple in the orchard glassed over into ghost-form on a single night. Centers rotted, dropped out, only translucent orbs at the end of wooded knots remained. A buck arrives, noses them to the ground. His only want: to hear the shatter. First my grandmother, then my brother. A permanent Autumn settles across my face. Brinks become a fabric to dress in. I practice sewing parts of my body shut: the mouth, an ear, the space between my fingers. At the edge of the orchard I find an owl. Bring my hands around the middle of the algid body, between my palms it moves as dead things move. Still, I’m gentle as I walk the owl out of the orchard to the place of bramble and stumps. Lay the bird out like a boat, like a baby in the arms, like a dirge. Slow gold light slips, the night freeze blackens fruit trees. I continue to visit the owl. The spiders come. The flies, too. For a moment one of the owl’s eyes opens. I look through the eye into the back of his death, parts of flight and story leak out. The collapse of the left lung: green. The collapse of the right lung: sky. I’ve only ever had one good dream in 46 years of bad dreams and it was of sleeping in a moon field with my daughter while friends placed inocybe between my teeth. The eye of the owl closes. The buck says it’s peaceful here, to be with you like this. I don’t say anything because I don’t speak anymore. Within a streak of light, wasps fly out of the ground as leaves fall in the orchard. I become a ghost apple at the nose of a buck. ————————————– Kelly Gray called us from Camp Meeker, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems twitter.com/voicemailpoems instagram.com/voicemailpoems