by Eric Freeze
I've tried to peel it, pry it open. There is no time for this. No time to take the shades under a culvert, the rocks and lanky brome, and have them account for childhood. No time to explain heritage: Nana and her bastard child. They welcomed the prairies for their plainness— the even layers of soil, the years ideal for farming, the humming grid of roads. It's erosion— chinooks and winters blow the years away. Living the prairie gives no meaning to our deaths. It didn't bear us, but tears like a vagrant swath through hay.
