Dry Season

I breathe in, out the air.
My lungs are smoke screens
against the burning grass,
the burning bushes.

Moses, Moses!
                 Here I am

Sun setting, flames flickering, face fogging
the window. Silence sat with me while house
music played on. Words spun around my head,
and fear turned my mouth into its spare room.

We’re in a land where tame, wild animals roam
near private lodges — reservations only. A winter
sky is gray on my June day. I’m seventeen on the
seventeenth. It’s almost eight hours later at home.

The days are quick, my words are late, the flight
is on time. Eighteen hours in the air — I don’t have
wings, but I still fly. I’m not free from pressure/cabin
pressure/cabin fever when I get home. It’s all heavy.

I’ve missed my mother  
land.

They’ll be here. He’ll be here in a month,
then I’ll have ten days to try again and fail
again and wait again. No burning bushes:
only burning skin dripping water we wish
we could drown in, out these heat waves.
​
Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?
...
Published in River Mouth Review