On the day the sky wept

blood over Texas

we stood together

a little apart

Bad posture against

chalky aluminum fence,

braids pulled tight

and neat beneath the sometimes

Clear and lying blue infinity.

She turned to me, nonchalant

with a whoosh of plaid skirt

and a click of Mary Janes,

Fixing me with a tepid gaze—

I don’t really care at all, she said.

It’s not as if I knew them.

My conscience relaxed then

Exhaling through my shoulders.

Me neither, I whispered.

Then she told me a myth

she had heard that morning

About a human head

that fell from Heaven

and onto the roof

of someone’s Toyota.

I aligned my toes

with a crack in the ground

and leaned all the way

forward until nothing

But the very tips

of my fingers clinging

to the metal twists

kept me from falling.