33rd; Her Blue Sky Theory
She trots ahead
Ignores the vacant cities
Dismisses everything
She tends to laugh, which baffles me
She won't shut up
I don't dare speak loud enough to echo
But she loves to hear the buildings reply "Hello"
I haunt her like a murdered father
A hagard man hanging on her elbow,
keeping a vigil while she softly snores
The forest of leaning chimney stacks
and razed cement foundations
is her crib as she sleeps on the earthen floor
I loot the ghost towns,
salvaging cans and kindling,
but she's too distracted to eat
from all those dreams
The education she receives
when she is fast asleep
She claims that once the sky was blue
or something just as silly
"Blue as milk from stubborn Bess,
blue like the drooling war-drones
The duds that swerved and flipped
and never hit a thing
Those few dumb drones--they lie in craters,
frothing coolant that's vivid blue."
She insists, convinced the sky was blue
and I just let her carry on:
"Everywhere the ground can't touch,
in pools between the gentle clouds,
but not like these--the clouds were white,
and you could drink them when it rained."
The world is her playground,
borderless and treacherous
She's up with a start in the uneasy dark
and forgets about breakfast
Blue or not, the sky perches above,
an unseen dome behind the clouds
A roof that rains on the weary
and the unstarvable urchin
Oblivious to the cold, she snaps out of sleep
crawls to where I lie in a heap
Her obnoxious echos rouse me from troubled rest
and we continue to the west
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