Snow Globes

SNOW GLOBES

Annar Amram

June multiplied like nesting dolls. I watched it open to double, triple in the heat wave mirage, a twinkling kaleidoscope Colors of lit-up theme parks’ melting cotton candy that fizzes in your mouth Jarring patterns, hypnotic swirls, swinging hips, dancing lashes Sunscreen’s sharpened knife-smell stabs the sky until I sneeze; a loud sound I inherited from my first father I open my eyes that I inherited from my first mom, to a fifth of rum divided, reverse slurp poured into ten drinks, all of them mine The lake pulls back its Kool-Aid blue lips to reveal the sun-bleached tree stump teeth The floor is lava Bare brown feet blister slaps on sweltering asphalt. I run through the striped shimmers from the chipped pink paint on my wooden doorstep to my cool concrete neighbor’s, the neighbor with rocket pops and neon animals bobbing in the pool The dog sheds like crazy. She flaps her ears at a dizzying speed, my favorite sound, when she shakes off her soft fawn tufts. She grumbles like I don’t already know it’s triple digits today I don’t think she remembers when we were bathed in the shy glow of a wavering fire. How I manhandled the logs into place. How I crinkled up the news in my practiced hands. Mossy wet wood hissed and protested. Sparks reached up and out, and rain sheeted from the sky and into our skin Now, there isn’t a single cloud in the sky Or when clouds expanded like desperate lungs full of water and sealed above us like a dome Now the sky is the rounded, taut skin of an airship, and there’s no fear of it bursting Or when leaves crunched dry and vocal beneath our feet. Wind wrestled the white ash tree fangs. Trees evacuated the forests in the jagged lightning seppuku in ear-splitting sonic booms that had her howling Now, I would kill for a teeth-chattering breeze to push my hair out of my eyes and tuck it behind my ear or a wind that would flop my dog’s ears up into the air Or when there were no engine mumbles or tyres tread through puddles to whip up waves Now, even the cars sweat, drinking straight from the whining hose Or when the sky held nothing but lightless gray. Its silver linings were past our horizons Now, we try to remember the ancestral chants to bring cold weather I don’t think we thought to make any.