wildscape. literary journal

You Tell Me It’s Just Weather
by Alicia Cook

I say the air
is raining gasoline,
that the sky
has traded its blue
for bruised clouds
the color of old blood.

You tell me, “It’s just weather.”
That the wind is carrying smoke
from somewhere else,
not here.
Never here.

But I can’t unsee
the rooftops alight in a false dawn,
the chimneys coughing black shadows,
the river boiling, spitting up
the bones of fish.

You laugh—claim
sunsets have always
looked like this.
Artificial. 

I keep pointing out the obvious;
the red smolder of shingles,
the crooked bridge sagging
like the spine of a tired beast.

You fold your arms,
close your eyes,
shake your head,
blame my paranoid imagination.

But these days
silence 
is an accelerant. 
Your apathy
tastes of cinders. 

And when the last house
is only an ember,
and everything we’ve ever had
is burned to the ground—
you’ll ask me why
I never warned you.

about the author // Alicia Cook