I love my job

everything is quieter in sonoma, even Death. 

she dreamt of overgrown grass at midnight 

and bare feet on damp soil. 

ants crawling on up her shins.

she crept through the fields at sunset 

and whispered her secrets to cows. 

she bit her fingernails too often, and 

the blood reminded her she was real.

she wore white dresses that hugged her in the middle

 and flowed at her ankles, 

and sat on the branches of oak trees 

watching cars speed by on the distant highways. 

she looked like a ghost, she felt like one. 

 

she danced around street lamps 

and watched mothers push their children around the square.

giggles always escaped her mouth when 

she wasn’t sucking on a cigarette.

too funny,

it’s too funny to watch all the mounds of flesh scurry

about the town square.

in and out of stores, cafés, and the mission.

too funny to watch their faces burn in the grape-growing sun, 

turning pink and broiled and noses bleeding wine. 

too funny to watch them 

trample ignorantly upon thousands of graves. 

she carried around a pocket knife,

stuck it in her left boot. 

and crunched through brittle brown oak leaves. 

crunched her way to the boy in the corner house. 

right to his dirty window,

she slid it open, a plume of dust falling upon her 

like a black veil. 

hoisted herself through and 

onto his carpet 

scattered with toys left

by a little brother interrupted in his games

who hurried to the car wailing, 

wrapped in his dad’s shaking arms.

she stared at the clock on his desk. 

it was always a few seconds behind; 

time couldn’t keep up with her.

 

she rested in the sickly green chair 

next to little clara 

with the tubes slithering in her nose and 

through her throat 

straight to her small soul

immature like a seed sowed in dry soil. 

she watched little clara’s monitor go silent

like the little girl’s parents.

the vinyl stuck to her legs and 

made a startling sound as she came to her feet,

like the tearing of ligaments.

oh she

didn’t startle

watching little clara’s parents from the corner house

fall to their knees 

and the nurses rush in. 

she tip-toed to the bedside,

silent like the monitor, and 

grasped the girl's tiny hands. 

she held the evidence of life, the evidence

that she was real.

clara or her?

oh, no one.

absolutely no one. 

 

she left the hospital in a hurry.

bounded past the pharmacy 

where some old man’s meds would be a day late. 

she’d come back for him later

because there was some clammy bum wandering up the hill 

with the cross atop it. 

the widow on the main road said he was just trying

to find god. 

the cross’s nightly glow led him there. 

but she the one in the white dress

that twirled around her body

like lingering smoke

from the wildfires 

which returned in late summer 

and carried her with 

their fury,

knew better. 

she gathered too many needles scattered 

in the oak leaves 

behind the headstones. 

she got there just in time to see the poor man.

dried leaves and dust from the hills 

sticking to his sweaty skin.

he was

stuck in the grey 

like too many people.

too many chores for her. 

she sauntered up to his body

his tiny pupils so damn desperate

for the moonlight,

but barely letting it in, 

her light in.

vomit trickled from his mouth through his yellow teeth,

rotting like the graves and the trees and the cross

at the top of the hill,

so much higher than her, but not him. 

misery is something she hated, so be it. 

she knelt down and put her soft hands on his head.

his eyes followed her as if he saw god. 

she was not god. 

because god was not merciful, 

not as real as her.

she snapped his neck, 

like the sticks that broke under her feet.

 

then, 

dragged the body, not his body,

the body under the oak tree. 

yes, he fell on his neck,

slipped right off the tree branch above.

the coroner would believe that.

it’s not like he’d bother to confirm anyway.