We crawl from the wreck into a ditch where the moon’s all afuzz with mold. Shrapnel under my shin. The cold descending. Finally smells like wet leaves and movie popcorn, my sister says, skull open. On first whiff, I get the oiled heat, the smoke, the reeking vomit on my shirt. I don’t get my movie popcorn. My throat stings. Man, that dry autumn air can’t get enough of our soft lips. Our lips. The ambulances howl from all directions like coyotes descending. We slither into the blackberry brush, broken noses to the soil slopped with our own blood. Our soft blood. That wet leaf smell I have found. Blackberries filter constellations across the thicket. The moon shows my sister’s lips, painted. I still don’t get butter but that doesn’t mean it is not there.
***
Kara Nosal is (pretty much) a Colorado native and graduate of Colorado State University’s undergraduate Creative Writing program. She has had poems published in Colorado State’s Greyrock Review and the ‘zine Ark and Saw.
