ZEKE SHOMLER | HYDROLOGY

ZEKE SHOMLER | HYDROLOGY

When my father’s daughter washed my dark hair in the war m midwestern gutter-rain, pink bubbles traveled down the hill in little rivers as if racing toward some other, safer life. We didn’t know, then, how phthalates and parabens could disrupt the cells of animals, slipping into muscle and marrow as a hand slips behind a closing door to stop the latch. I only saw the greenness of the yard, warm with light and swarming with mosquitoes, where we found four rabbit kits clustered like closed white flowers and tense with the fear of feral cats. There were no fences there, between the houses, only open space to watch the storm-clouds rolling in and reaching their green fingers toward the earth. My sister smells like nicotine and hair oil. She washed me in the foment of the summer rain, the first time I was baptized, the only one I still believe in. Faith in something larger than myself comes easily; to find its name requires a complex mathematics I have yet to learn. I am not my father, but I’ve sown seeds of this world’s unmaking, rinsed my scalp and poured the water-waste into a living mouth. I strain my neck to see the next downpour, anticipating lightning like each new year of my inevitable and damage-stricken life. When my hair was clean, my sister held me to her chest to hear my breathing.