Maybe she should have left the box shut. But upon opening it up to the blues, reds, purples, and greens contained beneath the lid, how could she leave it, silent and closed, again? Probably, she should have left it shut. Safely quiet and locked tight like chaste and prayerful lips. When she opened it, summer spilled out in waves. Like rolls of aquamarine fabric or a set of sparkling sheets, out it poured like mother’s milk. She was drenched in it. It overcame her, and she laughed gaspingly, startled and transported. The summer hues of sapphire blue and sunset-wheat gold encircled her shoulders and licked at her hair like rollicking puppies. She smiled. Maybe she should have left it shut. But now it was open, so what could she do?
These kinds of feelings, feelings born of closed summer boxes, inevitably bring trouble. These goldkissed thoughts and starlight-white gleams in the eye, they sometimes cause spontaneous eruptions of chaos that no one can predict. They dazzle stale lives and decimate fractured ashes. They heal as they destroy, like rivers drenching sun-scorched, parched fields. They ripple and flow, like flaxen lionesses, easy on their haunches with power in their jaws. Like sultry hips, they sway. Like frantic dancers, they stamp the earth with muddy feet and mash little grasses and drum in the pulsating pang-waves of birth. They cleanse and restore. They break and disrupt. They have no consideration for the sanctity of churches. They are noisy and abrupt, occasionally fierce, and consistently unapologetic. They really cannot help this. It is what they are.
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–Author Catherine Kyle is a Ph.D. student in English at Western Michigan University, where she teaches YA lit, banned books, graphic novels, and other fun things. She is the author and illustrator of the hybrid-genre collection Feral Domesticity (Robocup Press, 2014) and the author of the forthcoming chapbook Flotsam (Etched Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Superstition Review, WomenArts Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her site is www.catherinebaileykyle.com.
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