I wish
I could have been alive
that hot summer day
when that yellow dress
clung to her
by surface tension.

My mother said

they sweated alive.

Sweated
arm to arm;
elbow to elbow;
limb to wet limb;
all crowded into
Mount Morris Park
waiting to see her.

To smell her.

the tacqueria's
and fish fry's
were going
and the air was filled
with grey smoke
to make eyes sting
and noses clench.

Babies
that looked like black marbles
bobbed
to the surface of the crowd
escaping their mother's arms;
perched on shoulders
screaming
into ears
not listening for new life.

"it seemed so far off."

people fainted.
One woman
fell down beside her.

A hole opened up
to let the paramedics through.

A long ****,
where her fingers,
hanging limp from the stretcher,
slid across thighs
in the closing crevice
in her wake.

"She was old anyways."

The hole closed.

The new world
formed
in her place.

Onstage,
a yellow dress
warped
in the sun.

From the back
my mother
heard a voice
like thunder,
close thunder,
thunder
like the roar
of the universe.

Nothing else was present that day. Nothing.

Just the yellow sun
and it's yellow birth of black
spinning,
sweating skin,
and a lilting thunder
like the roar of a universe
coming from
the black earth
at the neck
of that yellow, clinging dress.

"Hello."
the thunder said.