Deposit the earthly trowel in cantaloupes of dying eaves as the light passes over rooftops with inconsistent shading, an anecdote of lively intrusion told each day with gasping breath of witches’ voice mid-curse. Daring and impetuous, rascals scamper beam to beam, intoxicated by the tread of warm tiles on bare feet in motion, fleeing the cauldron and all the tricksy fondling foretold.

This is the town on ice, the village incapacitated by the onset of its fate. An argyle sock limps drooling down the sidewalk and everyone steps aside with worried looks, holding up pant legs and chittering their teeth like cats at the window with sights on a bird. Thomas is an engineer and he’s given up. Annabelle chases chickens with a spoon. Charlotte throws her prom dress in the river. She spits. Angel removes his eyes. Replaces them with peach pits. He hopes to grow a tree. John thinks it’s a joke and Marcy bites her nails. They meet at the overlook to make love in the mist. I am the dizzy wind that sets it all to action, forgotten by rhythm and flux, manipulating motions barely my own.

In the end things will go back to how they were. Flat tires, ransom notes, garbled poems of myth. Houses built of apple cores. Desperate for another change, no one will remember what became and disappeared the same.