Chaos Theory

Sharon Kourous

Each articulate bone below stretched skin
weeps in silence. On Devil's Night, street
by street the houses burn. We might begin
a conversation, but our voices never meet.
I can't explain my absence, or how the taut
years enclose me now; or how a solitary man
strokes a trigger aiming at the world, caught
in some strange immolation; or a plane begins
a routine flight then splits apart. We met,
consumed by loneliness, but never spoke.
Between the soaring instants, we forgot
the force of gravity. And when we woke:
the random flame, the unexpected bullet, the air
pulled from lungs, the silence of despair.


originally appeared in The Piedmont Literary Review

Sharon Kourous