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{lightning bug} jacob oet I walk outside, doing the trash. I may be hit by lightning. I see the light on in my room, the fan circling. I see my sister watching me from the expansive living room picture window, me in the rain rolling the big black bin down the driveway, stuffed with weeks’ debris, signs of love, forgetfulness, missed deadlines, poems I was too coward to type up, notes I didn’t want to send, etc… I walk up the ramp, toward inside, scared that I will be hit by lightning because all the signs are right. The evening is just quiet enough to notice the rain. Only a fool would have gone out with the garbage bin in these circumstances. But I am safe. Luck or God or circumstance or something. I am safe. When I am back inside. When I am back inside, the house is hit by lightning, and the room in my light bulb expands, it flashes, the light bulb in the ceiling fan expands and flashes and buzzes like a moth dying too sweetly and it is gone like a punch in the chest five months ago that left you on your back turtle-like in the street with people passing you watching you little children sticking their tongues out at you or offering you rock candy on a stick. There is an extremely loud boom, a huge bolt of thunder, the computer speakers are fuzzing, and your heart pounds like a beggar. Where are they now, those beggars? Out in the storm? Under the bridge? The metaphorical bridge? The bridge of myths, of legends? The bridge that is so unlike a body, in that there are no walls. The bridge without sequels. The bridge you go to die under. And I am safe. Thanks to an invention of the last several hundred years, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison I think it was, the lightning rod also gave rise to the Sears’ Tower and the Empire State Building and twins I have not seen in years, not since I left the farm, not since my return what was it, five minutes ago, five months ago, five years ago, five centuries ago? To the haven of my senses. |
