Bad October

Last jacaranda season I got sick again. It was the clouds that did it.

I hated them. They pushed down with such a dreadful, oppressive forcefulness, like the repellent end of a magnet, until the world beneath grew tired and static and muted and none of us could breathe. Even the lilac blossoms weakened and wilted.

Under a rumbling purple sky, I sat on the front porch as kids came trick-or-treating, watched their brand new faces light up with joy as they dug for chocolate eyeballs. I tried to concentrate on me as the plastic jack-o'-lantern shook in my numb hands, but my stomach was lined with burning embers & so I had to flinch away.

I dropped the thing and scared the children. 

How sickening, I thought. How wrong it is to be a heavy ball of iron in a world made of glass. 

Still those ugly clouds just swarmed the sky, desperately swollen with heat and electric charge.

I am sitting in the lap of a jacaranda tree, knotting myself into its roots. Here is the problem: We've all been sick for a very long time.

And I don't know how to rest,

Don't know how to be content when I'm so white-hot and sharp inside.