The Megaphone

I Remember the Burnt Sienna Hill

I remember the burnt sienna hill

Country rocks turned bleach quarts

I remember my grandfathers office, redolent of dust, second floor so stuffed with boxes of legal cases you can’t get upstairs

The seatbelt buckle of my grandmother’s car burns against my skin in the scathing Texas sun, 

My skin flushes against my brother’s as we sit in the same seat, our little bodies

June 12, 2016…lights from the television screen recount how Omar Mateen killed 49 people in Orlando Florida earlier that night

The caddy holders on a golf cart buckle beneath my soles 

There’s a pink blanket 

I am bobbing for apples in an Episcopalian church 

I am with my brother in the fold out couch bed waiting for Saturday Night Live to come on

I am nuclear particles wafting through the deserts of New Mexico—

I am in impact crater 1.86 km in length

560 feet in depth and 148 feet in rise 

I hear a gunshot for the first time and know god for the first time in the same moment 

God is everything that is bigger than you

Photo by Anna Willson