Storm Chasers

Even in his dreams she’d not surrenderherself to him. But sometimes her blouse,cotton white, would melt away in the rain.

Like her mother, she’d one day race ahead,change her name, and marry a landed bastard,before drinking herself to death. Enduring

a mother skunk’s last gesture, she wiped a tearfrom her eye and pedaled past her crushed remains.Beside the potholed road, a killdeer feigned

a damaged wing. Mike stopped to save the kitleft crying in the briars. He smoothed her fur—black, cleaved by stripes of white—then sheltered her

beneath his shirt. Standing on his pedals, Mikeraced to close the gap she’d opened between them.He glimpsed her bike, in the shivering grass

at the base of the water tower,and Mel, climbing rung after rusted runginto the marbled gray and yellow sky.

Swooning over the view, he’d follow her,up ladders far more treacherous than this.At the catwalk, wind rumbled like a train.

Hail pummeled the empty iron reservoir,an abandoned timpani thrummed for rowsof hard green apples bobbing below.

Mel teetered on the rail—bare feet kickingelectrified air above the chasm.She cheered the righteous funnel as it turned

her father’s roof to swirling debris. Her hairwhipped Mike’s face as he encircled her waistto trust the orphaned skunk into her hands.