If there are infinite worlds,
there must be one where umbrellas never close-
hinges locked open like stubborn jaws,
gape-mouthed against walls in patient herds.

No one in their twenties owns one,
their hamster-cage apartments
too small for such luxuries.
They ask for rain jackets on birthdays.
Mary Poppins still drifts down Cherry Tree Lane,
her umbrella never folding,
only floating.

Children carry slips home
for violating umbrella laws,
forging signatures in loopy ink.
The Morton Salt girl wears a slicker,
yellow as a warning flare before the flood.

My mother walking me to kindergarten in rain,
transparent vinyl dome above our heads-
I, the opposite of a fish in its tank.
Her hair plastered to her forehead
by the time we reached the door.
Everyone looks most beautiful
with rainwater running down their face.

In the open-umbrella reality,
time can walk backward-
you can unwater a plant,
unpeel a clementine,
un-kiss someone.
Endings lift again,
fabric billowing, as if the story
had been left open in the wind.
Heather and Mike find the road out.
Rosemary tips the bassinet.

There, perhaps, neither of us was born.
What lay between us
stays open too long,
collecting rain until it sags,
slow and certain, like sugar
in the first storm.

The porch sags beneath me,
its gray boards sighing.
I light a cigarette,
send my breath to the wind-
maybe White‑Shell Woman
will carry it to the horizon.
He's fired again,
last kitchen inside forty miles
that could stand him,
bridge burned behind.

At lunch I’ll call,
say get out
or Daddy and Jimbo
will haul your whiskey bones
to lie with the rattlesnakes.

I swore to Mama and to Owl,
I will keep the night honest,
I wouldn’t spend my years
driving a man to dialysis,
watching Irish blood unravel
like wet lace.

But I remember the long Covid winter-
two bears in one den,
one soft, one starved-
when Spider Grandmother
wove us together
in the dim blue light
of tele-novellas and snow.
I almost believed
it was love again.

He pops up like a coyote
in the truck’s passenger door,
smelling of smoke and ruin.
Eighty‑five down the prairie road,
bug‑spattered glass,
sky bending blue,
fields gold as escape.

This isn’t working, I whisper.
We want different things.

Don’t, he says,
fingers crawling my thigh

No-
I shove.
Sweetness peels,
the sleeping volcano wakes.

Before his hand
can teach me the rest,
I already know:
there is no leaving.
The road is long,
lined with white crosses,
and Ghost Buffalo
has been leading me
down it all my life.

Just a quiet woman polished bright by nerves,
I once felt wild for dipping my hair in purple.
Noticing, my hairdresser asked if I had anyone special.

I dated a man with a good job
who liked museums.
We saw a drunk girl in a leather skirt-
heels hobbling down cobblestone,
her bird-arm linked through a friend’s.
He rolled his eyes:  
would you go out wearing skirts like that?
On the dating app I’d written:
loves dogs, drinks champagne from paper cups.

It wasn’t a lie, but I am such a liar.
I told him yes,
because I needed his reaction,
his self-corrected mind,
though I’ve never worn one.
I say I’m fine with whatever,
or this is stupid,
but truthfully
I’m afraid I’m only a very nice lady,
soft in the hands of whoever will take me.

I carry anger like a weak religion-
a god I light candles for twice a year,
more symbol than practice.
I’ve heard of burying St. Joseph upside down
to sell a house. But there’s no charm,
no saint, for loosening the knots I keep tied.

I want to keep the bright mess of my dog heart,
mud-spattered, mulch-snuffling,
faithful to its own scent,
while crows, squirrels, and the occasional fox
paw through the dirt
for what they almost forgot.

I watched Dad lift
the stunted tree from a highway table,
ceramic *** hot as a skillet in his palms.
Its roots pressed tight
against their shallow prison,
a life made small,
taught to accept it.

He drove through the Mojave
with the bonsai on his lap,
branches trembling
as if already afraid of him.
I whispered secrets to its needles,
pressed my lips to its tiny crown
the way you kiss a sleeping baby.

In the cabin,
rain thickened the air with cedar and promise.
I circled stones around the tree
like friends around a birthday cake
and waited for it to laugh.

When its *** shattered,
he said nothing.
I held its dangling roots in my hands,
mud soaking through my shoes,
syrup cracking on my cheeks.

We buried him-
a little boy, I said,
at the lake’s edge
beside his mother
whose twisted trunk leaned toward water.
Dad said magic would save him,
hoodoo magic,
forest magic,
the kind that never answers back.

On the drive home
I counted hoodoos in silence
and watched the empty bucket
roll on the back seat
like a heart without a cage.

There is a name
for the man with a hundred hands
who lies under your bed,
fifty mucked-up faces
for fifty bad-luck places
where your loved ones end up dead.

Rumpelstiltskin will not do.
Call him Briareos the Hecatoncheir
when his bone-breaking arms
reach up for you.

Call him Gyges, the fox,
sliding through your traps and lures;
Torquemada
when the dark door locks;
Haman, whispering to the jury;
Pharaoh, smiling in the hall;
******-
when the gas begins to fall.

You think you know him.
Do you?
Name him.
Or he will name your fate,
and you’ll hear it spoken
when the floor gives way.

After Dad died
Mom taught me her sauce-
olive oil, garlic,
whole tomatoes I crush
like hearts on her cutting board.

I remember his palette,
cinnabar and vermillion,
while she screamed over the stove
and he disappeared
into the attic light.

She was an artist once,
before I lived in her body,
before she hemmed my dresses
and cooked her life
into someone else’s evenings.

“It was always this simple?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“I used to do it the hard way.
Like Nonna.”
Her eyes don’t leave the simmering ***.

Love left alone will scorch,
turn bitter on the tongue
of whoever waits too long
for someone to taste it
before it burns.

Mom said we’d have lunch
with her cousin Bobby,
driving in
from Jackson Hole, or maybe Reno,
places so far from Illinois,
I couldn’t imagine the route.

She picked me up from horse camp,
two months gone,
and said we’d stay at a motel,
cable, a pool, continental breakfast,
before shopping for school clothes.
I said OK.

Our yellow house waited
on its alley of ratty bushes.
Home had become
a question I didn’t answer.

I wanted Opal,
the sweet white mare,
and the girls from other towns
who smelled like hay
and never asked about the divorce.

Somewhere, Bobby was driving
across the country,
but all I wanted
was to go back
to the ranch.

"There are apparently only six living souls
who actually understand the difference
between an ophthalmologist and an optometrist."

"And she's one of them?" the friend asked.

"Yes, because she married an ophthalmologist,
then an optometrist."

"Which did she prefer?
Number one, or number two?
Number one, or number two?"

I burn my one effulgent hour
at a driveway banquet of unwanted goods,
listening to a woman in a Sag Harbor T-shirt
tell me her son’s wife hates her,
she never sees the grandkids,
and she’s moving to Costa Rica
because the dollar goes farther
and no one visits anyway.

Through my sunglass scrim
I watch komorebi flicker
across the varicose veins
of her blue-white calves
and wonder why I even stopped,
why I ask the price of a microwave
I don’t want.

Twenty, she says,
brand new, never used.
I hand her two crumpled dollars
for a box of yellowed greeting cards
with kittens and roses
and tell her my real name.

All the while
I feel the light through leaves,
the ache to bite your buttermilk neck,
to nip the chantarelles of your earlobes,
while the shadow falls,
reminding me I’d better love
whatever I am doing -
because it may be the last thing I ever do.

The day we moved in,
the shingles dulled,
floorboards groaned,
whispers began.

Visions came true-
James Dean dying in twisted german steel.

Then I saw my own death.
At dinner, I told my mother.
Her gaze roamed walls, tile,
the rusted sink dripping darkly-
as if the watching house might answer first.
Finally:
“I know.”

Spindly fingers sporing,
Eyes boring,
Your voice dripped innuendo-
Nothing you liked more
Than a pretty *****
With a problem.

Your name a spell,
Mine a well—
Not whole but a hole,
Bottom dropped to hell.

You didn’t get what you wanted,
Only my death:
Gold threads strung me up,
Crown, cage, and child
All strands of the same
Choking mesh.

I wore it,
Strangled slow,
Dragged at last
To your
Rotting bed.

Arrive in a neighborhood not mine.
Phoenix sun splits the mailboxes,
Cracked cement, bald lawns, deflated kiddie pools,
sippy cups gone brittle in the sun.

A toddler screams
until a sibling gathers him inside.
Helios whips his chariot down the street,
steals my parking space.
White Shell Woman hushes the child
with a wind of cool dust.

I buy
donuts, Cheetos, pickles-
eat them in the car.
Gas station sink, hair and grit.
I scrub off orange powder.
Kokopelli swings from the paper towel rack,
flicking drops of water onto my face,
flirting, laughing at my small hungers.

Cemetery, sitting on the hood.
Graves hum in the heat.
Yours more-so.
Hecate steps from the shadow of a mesquite,
offers me three paths,
none of them home.
Coyote pads along the stone wall,
head cocked, grin sharp,
watching my pulse quicken.
White Shell Woman whispers:
Run.

The blood in me stirs-
knife-bright, restless.
I step off the hood,
already fleeing toward
any other life.

When she was younger,
my aunt wandered open houses-
asking about appliances, disclosures-
never to buy.

She walked through other lives,
voices echoing in bare hallways,
curry pressed into kitchen walls,
towel shelves labeled for Stuart and Ashley,
a dead wren curled in the attic vent,
angel ornaments nailed to a maple
with a plaque For the lost children.

She despised the staged ones-
rooms polished too clean,
gray carpets that never knew a body,
couches that never sagged
with anger or grief.

She wanted mess,
hair in the corners,
cracked linoleum like dry riverbeds,
a house confessing itself.

I once saw her return,
shoulders tight against weather,
keys like a rattle she never learned to use.
She climbed the stairs to her condo
above the clipped green of the golf course,
set her coffee on the sill,
and sat quiet-
her life ordered,
pared down,
afraid of leaving
any trace behind.

She never spoke of the reservation,
and I never saw it.
Our family folded into the city
like laundry hidden in cupboards,
tamed, pressed smooth.
She prowled those houses
the way I prowl memory,
searching for proof people lived,
uncontained,
unsanitized.