The Town Dreams the Tornado Apologizes
And then we woke up. And our uncles were still missing, our azaleas yanked and gone, our dogs dashed against oaks. But before we woke, we heard you say in a voice that hummed without words that you’d gone too far and would hold that rushing hole at your center for the rest of your life. Hearing that made us feel a little like church. We are people who forgive, but who can forgive something with no eyes, no ribs, no head to bow in shame? In the dream, though, we sat and spoke somber. In the dream, we reached out and took what must have been your hand, smoky and vanishing and damp. You let us. And when your whir-voice said, full of torn-off roof shingles and children’s coin collections, that you were sorry, we wanted, with all our blood and breath, to believe you. So, for the span of a sleep, we did.