by Meg McManama
He was drawn to the water like a bug
to the porch light, no,
like a boy
reaching for the hips of a woman
for the first time, he felt
like a man all at once
the water bit to the bone, grabbed
at his lungs and breathed him in.
With each gleam of lightning his sister
saw his erasure in the earth’s stomach.
Surely her mind melted too as she waited all night.
Rescuers came in the morning to retrieve
his sister from the edge,
his shoes from the pool, and I can’t sleep knowing
flip flops survive while raw nature digests
bone and man. Yes, he was reborn
as a new hue, a hue that epitomized the sublime,
a beauty too dangerous to understand, but to hear
he was nothing by morning gnaws at my bones.
Meg Mcmanama is an MFA candidate at BYU in Poetry. She lives in Utah where she rides her bike.
