Michiko would never know
the strange creature that opened its bowels
that day, was named Enola Gay

she would remember the fine feel of the water on her face,
the taste of tea she had with her pears, and the odor of chrysanthemums through her window

the same window through which
her mother would stare, there, at the morning sky
at the smothering smoke of all creation

her brother was left a shadow
on a wall, nothing left at all of her father
who stood at ground zero

Michiko, only double digits the day before
would follow her mother down the long road
to the smoldering fires and scorched skin
and the stalking stench of the dead

on the path, along the way
but only that day, Michiko would see the black giant
growing in the summer sky
a magnet to her eye

more beautiful than all
the sweet flesh and shrines that fed it
a billion years in an instant
that August morn