Five Desires

by Rook Rainsdowne

Spring

First came the wind through silver maples. Almost oceanic, it filled the entire neighborhood, papers floating away and trash can lids tumbling down the street. You could smell it in the puddles left over from last night’s downpour, feel April growing up your back, the pain in your legs at night stretching you into a new shape. I was obsessed with asphalt. No one ever looked at it, but it sprouted and glimmered with chips of quartz as if I was walking on stars.

Blood

The siding of my house was full of moss and mildew. Living galaxies cling to the spaces we forget to look at. I began an experiment. I tried to slowly melt into a sea of grass, but Dad kept mowing. I thought if my body was mown, I could be woodchipped into looking something like asphalt, or how I looked after scraping my limbs and face across it after falling off my bike. Hopscotch and foursquare were painted there. A map of America with five colors of state. My body added a fifty-first, another red.

Heaven

Whole generations of centipedes live and die without ever being seen by a thing with a closed circulatory system. Their bodies swirl into neglected mysteries, medallions signifying that there is too much life to see all at once before it dies. As I lay on the asphalt and stared into perfect blue, I could feel God not looking at me. Instead, the picture of my neighbors’ dead son Allan looked down from his window and asked why I was waiting.

Growing Older

One day, I was the same age as Allan, 15, when that car met his body on the asphalt. The next day, the air in my chest felt excessive, like a diver rising too quickly from the depths. I washed up on my lawn and found I was always stuck there looking up at him. Trapped in my room, forced to look across at him. Even down the street, it was hard to keep from looking back at him.

Weeds

When I waited at the corner for the bus, I searched for dandelions. Three green heads with mouths shut tight, five bursts of yellow, two mottled brown and shriveled, four with white caps not yet open, one with stars nearly all blown away. They’re growing from the body of the asphalt, like there’s something nourishing there. Like they love the sharp edges that glitter so bright no one looks.

BIO: Rook Rainsdowne is a poet currently attending Eastern Washington University's MFA program. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Protean, ANMLY, and fifth wheel press, among other fine literary magazines. They are a co-founding editor of COOP: chickens of our poetry. Find more at rookrainsdowne.com.