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Over

Amy K. Rowland

This is the evening of
one million fucking fireflies
beating their Chuang Tzu songs out
in the heat. Their brief signs blink
behind the trees, under dark shapes
of flowers. My dog’s head sniffs
the night and bobs in wet sky.
I opened today with my hands and I
could not close it. It feels like
there are bugs in my hair and if
they all light at once I will look
like an angel on a hill. Otherwise,
I will just be a girl with
bugs in her hair with a dog
taking a piss.
My fingers almost touch the fading
lines of the arcs they hung in
the purple air. My fingers feel
my dog’s fat tongue, my face. My fingers
remember my hands held a message
three years ago from
the prettiest boy I ever knew and
passed through small strips
of light pouring in an empty
stairwell where I tried to read.
They held the steering wheel across
a bridge in Baltimore and turned
to somewhere far. I trace firefly trails
like new words. I cannot stop
rewriting the letters.