Wake

Alie Kloefkorn

I was talking with my father recently, and he told me about a steroid shot his doctor gave him. He woke up the next morning without pain—no tension, no twinges, no hurt. I felt twenty-five again, he said.

I thought, I am twenty-six and wake up everyday and do not ache and think nothing of it.

When my brother was little, he rolled off the top bunk in his sleep. Forget break or bruise—the fall didn’t even wake him. (As an adult, he sleeps exclusively on the floor.)

Then, one windy afternoon last spring, I was walking back from the library and found on the pavement, amongst a thick layer of helicopter seeds, a trail of dead baby birds blown from their nest, skin translucent, heads like lightbulbs.

I tiptoed the rest of the way home.

Alie Kloefkorn studied English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and currently lives and writes in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in HOUSEGUEST Magazine and The Paper Napkin.