We walked along the edges of the pickup bed to avoid the alligators in the center, we were tipping and taunting and finally falling into the bed and scrambling, forgetting there were alligators when we found the sun-rotted tarps . . .
When Columbia broke into a burning rain over Louisiana,
fell in pieces into a thousand pastures and backyards,
my uncle joined the search party. It was not a rescue mission. It couldn’t be.
The moon painted a picture of me and she called it “hay.” The picture is my hair, sliced off from the ears down, tied with rope and slapped onto a clean, metal table.