Freak
Imagine living, the cannonball clean through the sternum, a hole the size of a coffee can kept for old screws and rusted nails. Imagine walking away, the fields, the streets, the years, a prodigy of forgetting, dangling flaps and shreds and nerve-ends slowly pulled back, ribs and spine knitting around the mouth of it, everything smoothing over. Till even you believe it didn’t happen, couldn’t, the physics isn’t right, but how else explain the uptick, mid-chest, these late October afternoons, the colors, the light, all that, and a volume of air, cool on the edges, passing through.