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58 Shape of Fire Sometimes the fires moved closer to home and sometimes spun back to where they began. I’d hide us from the fires in a hallway closet with a book that taught us how to talk with our hands: make an a like this, and tomorrow like this, and to make the sign for soul pull an unseen string from one cupped palm. When we crawled from our hiding to seek out the souls they darted like kites through flammable sky. Tonight I’ll fly home through a wind I won’t feel or hear through the engines to be with my sister who wept in my bedroom when she heard about marks I’d made on my body. A finger to her lips that moves to her chest will be the sign for tell me. To tell her I’m sorry I’ll take Father’s saw to the side of the highway and cut through the poles holding high tension lines. The things I can’t live with exist in the soil—asleep in thistles and feasting on seedlings. I’ve learned to fear the future like I’ve learned to fear the fires that burst in the tinder near the fallen wires. ...

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