Sarah Toomey

It will have been the next day that I can tell rain

yesterday. Save that enduring force of your face

behind my eyes, outward-looking. This wills me,

as the old woman spilling her groceries wills me,

as dusted, caked, erased, pushing trails through—

as the big sun over the bigger farm house waits.

When arid or when a razed plain, I do not eat,

save the fruit that reminds me of home. Then,

porch swelling like the fully outfitted house fly,

I will have been yesterday’s woman, and rain.

it is fifty-fifty that she



ever gets it back. in



the gold room, the plaques



were all late for us, leafy



once, now fifty-plus



years overdue. had we



vaulted ourselves from the room, it



might have thinned, anxious



at the prospect of turn, of



crawl, of smoothing



that inability to burn. she



pulls her tendons tight for



the grass in these ways,



knowing only glare and, twice,



reflection. legs are



sectioned, heaving under wrap. shoulders



flake away in passing and



   are gutted in the lap.