Still Life with Avalanche

I was thirteen years old when I learnedI was God; in the shower, iciclesformed down my thighs, every face

I would ever destroyfrosted for a moment on my skin.When the other girls slept over,

they swapped tips for shaving their legsas I willed their hair into voices & braidedthe sound of their screams

into echoing gulls. There were no propheciesto advise me, so when the boysunhooked my bra & cupped me

in their hands, I did not know they wouldcrack like that, the fingers,then the hands, arms, shoulders, until I was alone

in some car beside a seat full of snow, our breathstill steaming the windows. I becamemy own prophet—loved birches in winter,

blind spiders inhabiting caves so darkthat sight had become vestigial, the sound of airwhipped by the fan. Loved

snow, loved every boy morein those seconds when their bodiesclung to form, before crumbling

into the ever-rising drifts—the eyes, lips,the look of surprise wrought in ice.My mother was a painter. She'd paint a doll,

then a pile of pine needles, then a slabof stone over the needles: Still Life with Rock,fifty or more in the series. One night, I covered them all

with white finger paint. She told methey were better that way. She told me everythingis more beautiful when it's buried.