Volition

At seventeen,
She listens for disturbances,
the click of old locks,
the sigh of fence posts
straight in the ground.
 
The bones of the house crack
and list, this longing
like the rain, is always
too much or too little.
 
Even still, she's seen the china crack,
the spoons bend, the laundry lift
off the line and take flight
over the wheat fields.
 
Living here, she says, is
forever like testing a well,
throwing a stone and
waiting ----
 
for the ground to turn,
the dress to wear,
the sky to shatter and
burn, the bread to rise.
 
Her mother washes the blood
from her hands at the sink
while her grandmother spins
stories -- weddings, birth, loss,
one life into the next, her tales
fastening like a noose.
 
Lately, at night, she's
been traveling from her bed,
the earth smell wide as an ocean,
 
this desire in her like a sieve,
urging volition from her body
like water from a bucket.

Kristy Bowen