Hallows
by Melissa E. Jordan
Only that school was a fever dream — black frosting, bells sounding out of turn,
high shrieks quickly muffled.
Skirt over jeans. Blue eyelids. Charged air and ten minute thunderstorm,
ozone and ginger,
Tsunami of leaves flung against the cafeteria window.
Then we were wedged in the wheel well of her brother’s
pickup, finished with
Doorbells
and sweet looting, the
Black streets still wet enough to reflect
skimming stars, shards of moon.
Maddie and Eugene were up front with him, I remember.
We passed
her father’s experimental fields,
Slick with
governmental insecticide.
She switched her skirt to the side
like tossing a settled cat from her lap and
Staggered up against the racketing slipstream.
C’mon, she yelled and pulled me up
— gypsies tonight.
Then, who knows why, we kept screaming it.
Come on! Come on!
Hurling the curse, the benediction, against water towers, service roads,
the cider mill, the subdivision where my mother cleaned. I’m going
the orchard path she said when
They dropped us at the shoulder. Less steep.
Last weekend we’d helped hang weights on the
young pears and we heard them now,
copper striking copper. I set
My eyes on her surefooted paisley
progress, but when she turned her eyes were
Open sockets, just awful, and the
wind wouldn’t stop.
Don’t think about it just walk through it she called but
I was already rooted, trapped inside
the gnarled shadows and hammer blows.
She came back for me.
She set her thumbs at my waist,
evened my lopsided sweater, began
Buttoning it, bottom to top. We were
holding our breaths. A key was turning. Then she
Led me up away from the dark clanging trees.