after taking my Introduction to Creative Writing class, and I thought about how
the air traveled around my ears like vespers from the mouths of the ash trees
and sycamores discussing the war on the emerald ash borer beetle, and how it
ate up family from the outside-in to the inside-out, as well as how far from Asia
and Eastern Russia they traveled to upset Indiana. In Indiana, in our Indiana, we
are like the splintered wood in the hollowed out trees, some tossed out bric-a-
brac of a moment where I see strange fruit hanging about the Hoosier diorama
and matrix of hate. But there we were, eyes break-dancing in the sunlight, giving
dap and fist bumps—brown and white skin honored to touch the other’s, next to
smoking hut. How our grandfathers would see our solidifying functions as some
charlatan move in race relations. Is this far reaching or not reaching far enough,
in a state where Klan numbers rose to infinity? I see my voice lost like all the ash
trees. I see my voice lost in what the sycamore cares not to remember. In funnel,
my friend’s voice got lost in soft echoes, where his mind misfired. I didn’t attend
my friend’s church. Not due to the who—the what he’d been. Our benevolence
took three steps forward and one step back—it rose above the backwash filling
our brains and made us climb to the top of real—the red-hot where blues festers.
Photo by Kit
