Meghan Sterling

North and South

In the night, sudden wind roaring up the sides of our building,
shaking the windows like loose teeth, and I remembered the tendrils
of bougainvillea lashing against the wooden fence that separated us
from our neighbor’s barking terriers, those dogs digging in the pig grass,
thorns in their paws, kept inside during an August wind that nearly
pulled the vines free, all those pink and purple blooms like paper cranes,
their delicate veins, a confetti of color against that flat gray Florida
summer sky like the wet pages of a trashy novel. My brother always says
photos are better with a gray sky, the colors pop, and I see them still
like a photograph, those bougainvillea blossoms torn loose and whirling,
settling in between the fat blades of Florida grass tough as wood, the kind of grass
that can and will cut your feet while you collect the tissue petals of bougainvillea.
When I moved up North I couldn’t get enough of it all, the soft summer winds,
the summer grass like lace, stayed barefoot for months, even made love in it.

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