Cicadas sing—thrum and wheeze from the mulberry trees, a row of knotted trunks hugging the fence between pole beans and dandelion lawn, the highest, greenest leaves dusty from weeks of our passing back and forth on the gravel drive. I stand on our unpainted, sagging porch, holding the baby's cup and her dress, clean and crisp as Chinese poppies flaming in a summer portrait. Cicadas begin their song again as if they had stopped when the screen door slammed, stopped and breathed in, their eyes like orange beads and their wings like chaff. They sing even within the walls of my human chest, they sing in the rooms of my eyes and lungs, in the struggling chambers of my heart, and the trembling of the blood in my wrists. When I stand in the sweet humid air holding a cup of water and a red dress, I foresee their bodies’ husks emptied, clinging to the trees, shells of lace, I wonder what it will be for my fragile daughter and me to shrug our dresses, our skin, like linen from our shoulders, confused or blessed by music of our own.
Diane Hueter is a Seattle native now living in Lubbock,Texas—a place with very blue skies and very little rain. Her poetry has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and Iron Horse Review. Her book After the Tornado (2013) was published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. Diane attended the Community of Writers poetry workshop (a truly transformative experience) and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
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