Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2022
Chernobyl Leaves Juliet Hinton I remember when the alabaster sun fell out of the sky and all the crops turned into ash, the trees became seasonless overnight; 20, 000 years until they would be habitable by the birds and the air again did not taste like soot. Children were not allowed outside unless we wrapped them in plastic; they looked like locusts with those plastic hoods and wiry cords. My father wept in his cupped hands so, we could not see his tears. "We were once forest people," he kept repeating as if that could woo the trees back. But even though the government promised to bring them back; there were no treetops left for us to claim or hewn or barks to dance around. From our shutterless dormer we could only see dying sunflowers and leaves that looked like flocks of blackbirds.
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