Canaan
The mother
of all destructions was a fire
of 1,300 degrees, about twice as hot as a regular fire,
an explosion of flaming olive oil jars, timber walls and wind.
Ten miles north of the Sea of Galilee, it got so hot
that mud turned into glass,
and a stone library disappeared in the sand.
Lisa’s house was an orange-groved refuge
from the Jerusalem winter of our Pontiac, my mother driving
the bumpy brick road, sure it would wreck the transmission,
on the way to my first junior-high party.
My goodbye sounded like eggshells—I could feel the red slip
in my wrists.
In the living room, Lisa looked through the sliding glass door
at the dark trees that were each a boy and a girl pressed together.
Lisa said, "Go ahead, even you can find someone."
Her cruelty made me feel like I was filling up with sand,
about to be cemented in place, but in the glass
I saw the dark a boy would touch.
Copyright © 2004 Kelle Groom