mapping the damage
We don’t know the world
the way the crow flies
or embers blow.
So when my friend says her sister
across from Warembourg
is displaced, I don’t understand why.
But where did the ash come from there?
I ask, puzzled.
From our street! she says (with the obviously! implied).
I think about it,
consult the map,
and of course she’s right –
it’s straight east of Mulberry
in a way the winding suburban streets
and bike paths make you forget.
There are burned chunks
of other people’s houses in her attic
she says,
and I finally grasp
how one sister’s home could have
lit the other’s up.
But, thankfully,
my friend’s house held
and they were both spared that fate.
Now they try on simpler smaller lives
in different parts
of this parched brown valley.
We’re all relearning this landscape
with a new level of intimacy,
a gift we wouldn’t have asked for
that changes us anyway.
