The sky turns tart seconds before lightning cracks the earth. I used to fear that vicious, backlit sky— the one that screams cellar, mattresses over huddled shoulders— but I’m losing my taste for a chamomile-tinted life, craving light that tastes like lime, the burn of that tequila shot sky. I envy her seething rage. Everything envies bird’s access to sky while sky envies earthworm, mushroom, dirt-dwellers. She is more than a placeholder between trees, cloud canvas, highway for summer breeze. She is sky. Content no more to list above the earth hating pine, and string bean for sinking their roots into soil and the cattle’s careless grazing. Fuck the bird, the thankless butterfly. She spins, she scrapes, she strips the ground Sucking prairie grass, blackberries, fiddlehead ferns, she funnels summer corn, marigolds up and up. Soil an ecstasy of bell peppers, snap peas, soy beans, horse hoofs, willow roots. Unshackled, sprinting across the land—sky! How I adore your pulsing green frenzy, your absolute disregard for scarring what you love.