Leaving
Cheryl Snell
 
A woman is walking her blonde dog
when the world disappears. Shadows sweep
across the moon and swallow the houses
like trick swords and carnival fire. Things like that
should be packed away in a trunk, hidden
in the back of a truck someplace where people
are unshaken by the sight of a bloody sky,
who take each other onto the lawn to watch it bleed.

After the moon blackens, the curtain pulls back
on a paring of light. The bright spot blooms
behind the silhouette of a woman on stilts, lurching
above the trees. Her house is where she left it—
the yellow dog points it out with cocked ear and lifted paw.
She steps over the dog and the house, eclipsing them.
No one notices how much sky she carries on her back.
 

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