Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child

Alice at Seventeen: Like a Blind Child by Darcy Cummings

One Summer Afternoon,

I learned my body, like a blind child leaving a walled School for the first time,

stumbling from cool hallways to a world dense with scent and sound,

pines roaring in the sudden wind

like a HUGE chorus of insects.

Ifelt a damp socket of flowers,

touched weeds riding the crest of a stony ridge,

and the scrubby ground covered the hills.

haystacks began to burn,

smoke rose like sheets of translucent mica.

The thick air hummed over the Stretched wires

of wheat as I lay in the overgrown field Listening

to the shrieks of small rabbits

bounding beneath my skin.