And if this were a novel it would mean something when 
my mother said she’s worried about their natural predators
the copperhead snakes that blend into tree bark 
so you don’t see them until it’s too late–I would feel 

                                            a slithering in my gut, the instinctual ache of a plot

set in motion. The summer would be plum lipstick smudged
on wine glasses, crying on the porch. At the cocktail party,
I’d stare at my high-heeled blistered feet and wish
I could be softer, kinder, all ingenue. I’d brave the August
heat to visit the Vermeers, and, on the subway 
back, the backs of my thighs sticking to plastic
seats, I’d wonder how all these male artists 
can crack themselves open and find a hard gem 
of meaning–when I crack myself open all I find 
is mist and refracted light, nebulous gas
that could never form a world, and 

                                            everyday the thrumming 

would grow louder, the sound of rhythmless wings beating 
still night-air unseen, a dark river
alluding to the inevitable end, and if this were
a novel, I’d say, I don’t hear them. Say, it doesn’t 
make me uncomfortable to think about how they’ll be 
devoured.
                               Everything needs to survive.

I would never talk about the dreams of the oaks and their iridescent 
veins, twisting, like a myth where the trees
are women who come back. Or I’d say, it means 
nothing. Say, I have no idea what’s coming 
for me. But I can tell you 
the truth:
                               I know it already. Have always known. Time

coils back on itself, seventeen years 
ago I was a child splitting rocks in the garden. 
I watched quartz spew out in all directions,
like hard, glinting eyes that had witnessed their own 
Big Bang. I pressed my palm to the earth, and I knew that

                               under everything, everything, there is a hissing.