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Kites

Erika Cottrell

I have memories of cloud busting with my father, shooting at the sails of Cumulonimbus until it bursts into dust and makes no sound; distorted, muted; yet all I can hear is the thunder that keeps me awake at night; the storms come to rip our roof off and I lie in bed knowing we must pull them from the sky—I will stand on the balcony and pull as they billow down like chiffon, all going in the basket with my shells, and in the morning I’ll walk the cape in blue. I’ve done a bad thing, stolen a conch, taken a single louse from the tide and stabbed him with my hook—I will kill again. The man’o’war beneath my foot, a thin balloon who dreams of helium and not quantum physics in this place of no waking computers, where the system sleeps and dreams of things in the abyssal zone; the dark I try not to imagine as the sky dies and the sea turns black.

Spring, 2019 Issue

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