Guilty and Reckless, I Try to Meet the Tornado Head On

Bicycle: hold my cards in your spokes for this dumb spin.

Indiana reminds me    that right before the tornado,        the world—

it’s all golden and fresh like a warm loaf of bread, like honey            drizzled over every last thing, the cracks

    in the sidewalks sticky with honey and the dogs would bend        at once to lick it, the ants get stuck, the birds’ beaks stuck                closed with sweetness.

Later, the dogs are full and I don’t eat,                and I don’t eat,            and then        I try to think of something geometric and pleasing like            a suspended staircase:

    each of its steps held up by mathematics, tiny        excuses and explanations science asks us to believe in.

                Me: an ancient wheel,

            a Fibonacci sequence:    ammonite-me, hardened impression of the girl who used to be:

my slouch an apology rendered            and re-drawn by nature—the sorry, sorry                stuck to my surfacelike a slug. The tornado never touches down. Some consolation.