#notallluchadors
1983
Abandoned Kiddie Pool
Border Patrol
Eight Blind Dates Later
Independence Day
Las Salinas
Ode to the White Lady Who Asked to Touch My Hair
Plan B
Proof
Reconfiguration
Snake in a Can
Symptoms
The Tall Grass and the Long Night
Tornado
Trade
Turning Out (The First Year)
We’ve Taken Care of Everything
Tornado
Callista Buchen
I insist on a safe room, something guaranteed to stand the wind. This is life on the prairie, I say. The men bring bolts, drive rebar through concrete. We make everything hard. The steel room out in the garage, loaded with gallons of water, the extra pairs of shoes, the threat. I know a mother who plans to tip the dryer over her children during a storm. What can I do, she says, and we all nod.
The weather is easy enough. After the children are asleep, I make dinners for the week and freeze them, I refill the soap dispensers, I sort laundry, as if I can hold it back. I curl against the tile floor in the kitchen and stay up late making lists, drawing maps. When I mistake the wind for a woman weeping, I wake the husband. Where can I get more steel, I ask him, my fingers on the baby’s chest, counting breaths.