In the employee housing lobby
where we stamp our feet and drink weak coffee
the toaster oven catches on fire
flames leaping from its maw like curses
so and we yeet it out into the snow.
When they ask who forgot to clean it, we say all of us.
It sizzles against the snowbank, one wisp of smoke straining up.
My boots are heavy but I’m floating.
In the early morning coyotes wake me
their voices almost human. Who is guilty? All of us
But no one wants a Cassandra.
ghosts only dustbunnies at the back of the cabinet.
ghosts only crumbs in the bottom of the oven. Ghosts growing restless,
asking: why have we been ignored?
At fifteen you threw plums at a boy’s car, whipped donuts in a parking lot.
Two years later we raised his voice from the dead in a circle of salt, a book fell open and we sprinkled
round agates looking for his words.
Coyote pelt across the fence: pests.
we disagreed.
The dead bear gifts and no instructions on how to open: cigar box. hibiscus bud spiraled tight.
an apple from the bank of the mercury pond, which everyone says
will give us terrible dreams.
You biked the white-knuckle curves
of the California highway to his shrine. Prayer flags tugged in the wind.
Found a deer skull, which you balanced
on the handlebars, all the way home.
I read somewhere that this year there were for the first time
fewer movies where someone says let’s get out of here
than movies where someone says stay.
After the fire we will loot the ghost houses for stories.
We will go through the places burned down to concrete rectangles
and pull out a bottle of ink, rubber chicken, stray barrette.
But that’s another story. That’s the easy story.
So much to do we say.
Coyotes say No. Coyotes pause crossing the road for one lantern-yellow stare. They have always been so close.
What I’m telling you here is
the toaster oven sizzles in the snow, when we pull it out it leaves
an imprint of soot, and all of us say so much to undo.
Elizabeth Wing is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Wing’s recent work has appeared in venues such as Poetry Currency, The Washington Square Review, Witness Magazine, and Pictura Journal. She feels most alive catching garter snakes, playing the harmonica, and yelling into spaces that echo.
