Don't Think of the Farmer's Gun

Lie on your back. Balance a half-empty
plastic water bottle between your eyes. A trembling
lullaby, heavy goodnight kiss pressed close on
the brow. Tell me what this is. Call it proof, call it sleep.
We are in the achingly gold grass but not
of it. The checkered picnic blanket lifts and
swells like bloody lips, a flag without country.
A leaf splits my palm. You say don’t flinch and
I don’t. You say close your eyes and I do, someone
has to believe you, someone has to. I press my face
to your throat and hide myself in the opalescence
of your necklace. I become a charm. Good
luck, I say, good luck good luck. Don’t be nervous,
don’t think of the columnar rays
of sun as stage lights. Shine me with the hem
of your cotton skirt. Tell me when the farmer comes back
with straw clenched between his teeth.
He walks until his muck boots stop two yards from
where we have gone still as the earth, and the grass
flails around us like tube men dancing in front of a
car dealership in Kirkland. Turn to me. Put your
finger to your lips. Look into my eyes that are
blown wide, and you don't know which

it is—love or glee or panic or joy or

the fear that follows each. My mascara

collides with yours. Black streak, black boom.
War paint. No tears, never. Hello
darlings, the farmer says. He does not see us. We
do not hear him. Roll a dice and cry out
if it lands on one, four, three. Let him see us
then. Let the wind howl loud, fling gravel bullets
into his face, blind him. Let him bleed.
The sun shudders. We run. We don’t look back.