I: Chimera (It's When You Know Each Tree Around You--that's When You Become a Prisoner)

The world has lost its shadows, cast
so suddenly, so violently, into dead peace
and disquieting silence, left
to consider alone in one
monolithic penumbra, orphaned.

The woman with the red hair
wakes when the naked trees--sick
with so much testimony--gasp
in the grey light. The forest is the same as yesterday
and the day before, but still
so surprising when stripped
of its consoling and smothering
clothing--that deceiving night.

She starts the day
with a trochaic sigh, thinking
about the firewood, the empty
corner near the old stove. I didn't look
last night. The room is cold. She imagines
a fire to cook with and to warm
her frozen limbs. In this way
she is still human.

Snow has covered yesterday's tracks,
and those destinations are lost. She knows,
however, that they lead nowhere, and that every
tree is identical, and that the monochrome sky
refuses to speak. She knows
that there are no ends.

Bracing herself for the cold, both literally
and metaphorically, she undoes the latch
on the ancient door. Won't be long
before all the good wood's gone. She brings
that old axe, which carries
no memory and cannot tell her
about the world in which it was forged.

The fire starts slowly.

Patience earns her a rabbit, which she holds
by its cold ears, which stem
from a crushed skull. Its remaining eye
holds something she cannot identify
and doesn't wish to.

It'll be dark soon. She considers
gathering wood for the morning, perhaps
another meal, but has difficulty connecting
reasoning to images. She listens to the silence
of the trees—the ones without the rustle
of leaves or the pulse of sap—and feels
the scenarios breaking apart
like bones do, over the years.

 
II: The Bleeding Hands of Those Left Behind (Survivors)

When she was still alive, I asked my grandmother
how it happened. I was just a little girl.
She and my brother and I were sitting
around the fire in the living room. It was winter.
Collin was running the poker across the burning
logs, leaving fiery scars in the wood,
when he said it was an alien attack, and instead
of correcting him, she just looked at him
lovingly. He spat into the orange embers
and it sizzled.

I was just a little girl. My mother
put me to bed on a hot night in August. I remember dreaming
about a boy I liked who lived next door. His name was Trevor
and his eyes were blue. He had blond hair. I dreamt
that he was holding my hand as we walked
down the sidewalk, and in my dream I told everyone
we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Then I was dreaming about being shipwrecked,
and then I dreamt I was in an earthquake.
When I woke up in the morning,
something was different. I went to the window
and saw that all the trees lining the street were dead.
There was a car parked sideways, blocking traffic,
but there was no traffic. Nobody was in the car
and there weren't any others. The sky
was grey and there was a light, cold rain. I looked
closer and saw that the ground was covered in ash.
Some of the houses across the street
were caving in on themselves and looked
like they'd been there for a hundred years. I stuck my head
out the window and saw that ours was covered
in dust and soot, and I was scared.
I went downstairs to find my mother, and she was
in the kitchen, slamming the phone on the counter. Nothing
works, she said. Not the lights, not the stove, not
the microwave, not the TV, not the radio--
none of it even turns on. She looked
like she was about to cry. Come on, Emily, she said,
we're going to your father’s. She grabbed my arm
and took me to the garage. She found the release cord
for the door and pulled it open herself, but
when we got in the car it wouldn't start. It was silent.
She hit the steering wheel with both hands and sobbed
into the vinyl. I didn't know what to do so I waited
until she stopped crying and we went back inside.
She told me to stay at home while she walked
around the neighborhood. She would always come back
without any answers, without anyone else. There’s nobody,
she would say. Nobody at all. Three days later,
someone came to the door. He banged on it until we let him in.
He said he saw the light from our candles. My mother
asked him what was going on and he said he didn't know.
The three of us, starving, went to the grocery store the next day,
two miles away. We walked there, passing skeletal trees
and abandoned cars, but no people. The store was locked
but my mother was so sick with worry that she slammed her fists
against the glass until it broke and fell to the floor. The clatter
was the only sound for miles, and then, in the silence,
we knew we were alone.

I looked up at my grandmother and saw the memories
in her eyes. I thought about asking her
what microwaves were, or phones or TV. I had seen cars
rusting in the streets--oxidized
evidence of another time. I wanted to ask her about Trevor
and what happened to him, but I didn't. She sighed
and smiled at us both and the fire died slowly.

 
III: That Whimper which Deafens (Blood Under a Bruised Sky)

I gotta tell you what we did
a couple years back.

First thing you gotta understand
is that nobody fuckin' tells me or my friends
what to do. I can't fuckin' stand
that shit, when people are always
sayin' do this, do that. I'll fuckin' do
what I want and so will my friends.

We all grew up together and knew
each other pretty well. Spent a lot of time
walkin' around the old streets lookin'
for shit that nobody found yet,
stuff from before. Most of our parents
were dead or too weak to find food
for us, so we was used to findin'
our own shit. Worked for us.

The old man, he had one eye
and raised chickens. Lived in this
fucked up lookin' flat building
sort of by my house. Kept
the chickens on the roof
in a bunch of cages. Wore
a torn shirt over the empty socket.

One of us thought it'd be a good idea
to grab one of those fuckin' chickens
and bring it home to his parents to eat, and then
we all wanted one, so we went up to the place
and found a window open in back, crept in,
tried to be quiet.

We were lookin' for the stairs to the roof
when he found us, stared at us all with that one
blue eye and looked mad as hell. He knew
what we were doin' and he didn’t like it. He grabbed
the smallest of us—little guy about fourteen—and held
him by the throat. Told the rest of us to get the hell out.

My best friend, biggest
of all of us, he was behind him, cracked that old fucker
over the head with some rusty
fuckin' pipe and the guy let go and fell. He rolled over
and looked up at him and he
was about to hit him again, but I
said no, hang on a minute. I went
and stood over that fuckin' piece of shit,
got the knife my dad gave me
out of my pocket. I sat on the bastard's
chest and showed him the knife. See it? I asked
him. He said yes, yes I see it, and I
leaned over his face and had
one of the guys hold his eye open. It was all wide
and staring back at me, and I didn't
want to look at it anymore so I stuck
the blade into the white part, just under
the blue, and popped it out of his head,
cut the bloody threads. He laid on the floor
and cried and moaned. I don't know whatever
happened to that old shit. I don't know if he heard us
go upstairs to the roof, if he ever knew
we let all those chickens out and killed
every last one.

 
IV: What She Didn’t Tell Her Grandchildren was that She Had Prayed (Ten Nights)

I woke up today and everything
was different. I saw my mother cry
and I don't know if my father
is alive. Is this the end of the world?

--

We've been burning candles and eating
what hasn't spoiled. We haven't seen anyone else.
Are we the only ones left? Are we alone?

--

We ate the last of the food today. She says
we'll go get more tomorrow. I'm afraid,
scared to go out there when there's nobody
left. What's gonna happen to us?

--

Someone found us. He promises
to take us to the store tomorrow,
out by the highway. I cried
when he walked in, I was so happy. I don't know
who he is and I've never seen him before
but I'm glad he's here. Did you send him?

--

There’s nobody left but a few, hiding
in their houses. We've seen
maybe twelve in a town that once held
ten thousand. What do you plan
to do with the rest of us?

--

I'm so scared. Please
tell me you're out there. Can't
you answer me?

--

Where are you?

--

Are you gone?

--

We're leaving tomorrow, going
on a long walk with all the others
to the city, to see what's left. I
don't know what to do anymore,
or what to say. I feel
like I'm crazy, talking to empty space,
to nothing. Why did you do this?

--

Did you know that I loved you?

--

 
V: Asleep in the Soil, and the Ice, and the Marrow (What Withers and Blooms)

One of the few surviving mirrors
belongs to a pregnant woman
who currently stands before it, naked
and afraid, running her hands slowly
over her swollen belly. She is broken
into segments that don't line up, ergo composed
of jagged triangles, and covered
in a permanent, hazy film.

Through the cracks in the boards covering
the windows, she can see that the night
is swallowing the day, and she understands
that soon the crumbling buildings around her
will step back into the dark and disappear, becoming
forgotten nightmares, and that soon
she will use the last of the day's strength
to move the chunk of concrete
in front of the door, that she will rest
on her bed of blankets, nest in their warmth,
think about her vast solitude, fade, and dream:

slivers of certainty in the flakes
falling from the sky, their undoing in the dull
light—that unfailing erasure, undoubtedly
symbolic; the spirit within her daughter's womb,
and her granddaughter's; the spark
bestowed by her sons
and grandsons; the unblinking, solitary eye
of the dead rabbit—that perfect, timeless
metaphor; echoes in a dead city, slapping
the buckled concrete; questions asked
by her child, overlooking a grey, birdless
lake, and her inability
to answer them; the morning, sweeping
slowly over all those bones, speaking
obsolete languages that no one has quite forgotten, sewing
trust and doubt into each dewdrop, remembering
isolated flames, awakening:

a pale but ceaseless pulse.