Have the birds outside been talking to you too. Does each beak parting in the thaw make you think of fifth grade choir practice, all whistles & tiny songs with plastic-flamed candles, sun enveloping you & the crows & twilight calling you by last name, then first. Do you see creatures in flight. Are they waving as they land atop a swing set. This place lacks teeter totters & you no longer take college boyfriends & drunk friends to your childhood playground. It’s 8:20 PM. You live where the sky is grey & frozen. States away, a funnel cloud considers forming. You aren’t there to see it coming. An EF-5 strikes a farming town in Missouri. You could have been happy, if only you had opened the window, but here you are, going backwards, always falling but never the rain.
Hannah Cajandig-Taylor resides in the Upper Peninsula, where she is an editor for Passages North. Her work has appeared in Gordon Square Review, Flypaper Lit, Lunate, Drunk Monkeys, Coffin Bell, and Third Point Press, among others. She has been nominated for a Best Small Fictions award and still plays Nancy Drew games on her computer.