The girl’s untouched skin

never answered her questions,

so for the past dozen weeks,

she guards her own body.

She walks from her suburban home

to the nearby field, stepping off

the sidewalks’ stable physics and

away from the streetlights’ particles

and waves that want her safe.

The studied grasses recognize her,

counsel her to cleanse

her briny face with aspen bark.

All night, the geography of trees

listens to her through the feral ears

of possum and coon and quail

who quickened at her arrival

then grow still, awed by the girl’s

own light no one can extinguish.

For hours, the moon lingers,

diffusing her light through the trees’

branches, like spottled gleaming light

refracted in the eyes of wild dogs.

When the moon departs, the girl

picks up a psalm in the meadow

by the aspen grove and bemoans

the darkness before she walks

back to her dark quiet home.