August in Mississippi and everything is turning
atmosphere. My sunglasses fog. My hair clouds.
On the porch, the board game left out overnight
warps like heat waves rising. Everywhere, green—
crepe myrtles, kudzu, moss, vines, sapling-weeds
thick as thumbs. When I say wildness
thrives here, I mean I’m afraid to step outside
in the morning. I mean I’m afraid to walk
into my dark kitchen at night. So many lives
drinking this wet air, growing longer, leggier
in the heat. Lizard in the linen closet, cockroach
flickering under bedroom door. Centipede
brazen on the porch swing, too thick to smash.
Orbweavers thread every acreage of this state—
golden, orchard, starbelly. Is it even Mississippi,
asked a friend, if you don’t get a spider or four
in the face every time you go out? But lately
I’m telling myself to go out anyway, to walk
down the dark hall barefoot. Lately I’m trying
to save my fear for what matters. Look at its engine
inside me, how it revs my heart. What laziness
to waste its heat on small beasts when
there’s so much to melt down: deliberate cruelty,
AR-15s, the phrase the benefit of your views.
Dear animals, teach me. You know how
to turn fear to fuel. I’ve seen you rebuild
the wrecked web thread by thread, watched you
scurry behind the baseboard with two legs
gone. Sometimes the engine inside me
stalls out—so many news alerts, the flags
full time at half-mast—but you keep going, keep
going. Just yesterday a lizard darted out
from under my bed. Too slow, I caught
only its tail with a glass. The tail twitched
for a few minutes, but the lizard, busy
with the work of survival, never looked back.
