Six-O-Four

by Susan Dickman

And she fell into the world like the thrust of a flower working its way through the soil. And she entered the world like a diver breaking the water's surface. And she was covered with petals and brine, fossilized bits of volcanic ash from some long-ago eruption of a lost city that fell off the edge of the map. And she sucked in the air and the air made her human, though her eyes looked about with an animal's gaze, presentient. Unaware of who we were. Then sucking, sucking drawing me into whoever had arrived on that still morning. Early autumn, yellow leaves paving the sidewalks.