Nora Culik is a Michigan native who loves strange poetry, mathematics, and bad puns. Her fiction has previously appeared in The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.

apollo says goodnight

the sun sets as i’m driving down I84.
it feels like i’m in a fishbowl, gasping
one last breath before the water closes
over my head.
mountains menace me on all sides,
and i wonder if i will ever see the horizon again.

it’s the third day of spring, and i left michigan
at ten this morning. green had started to break
through the drowned debris of last year’s crops.
i’m ready for summer:
i imagine sweetcorn, and fireflies, and the scent
of fresh wet dirt. i imagine the hudson river,
starry hercules, and the train from poughkeepsie
to the city rocking me side to side.

but i’m not there yet. spring has barely opened her
blind eyes; her first chinook breath still blesses
the woods. i haven’t picked a crocus yet.
i’m not home
yet
the sun sets behind me. when i crest a hill,
i can see its globe hovering in my
rearview mirror, turning the sky a soft clementine.
before me, the clouds the pink of a fresh scar.