Instead of a father

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a volcano. A girl puzzling through long division between eruptions. A girl working hard

to discern the intervals between disturbances. It was a kind of having to duck from the

pumice. It was like the chunk of anthracite in your 3rd grade classroom, the one the

teacher couldn’t stop talking about. It was like the chained dogs at Pompeii — it was that

pitch, one of the many greatest hits of the 70s. Steadfast like breathing in the finest

particles, the ones that lodge in your blood. Like a cubic mile of ash and mud and rock. A

seismic jolt followed by an explosion. It was like a heat surge scorching every eukaryotic

cell, its Golgi apparatus, its smooth endoplasmic reticulum and its rough endoplasmic

reticulum, each you kernel singed.