A windstorm the day after the night the coyote snatched the cat. Then the fires came. Bands of Santa Anas blew away every strand of fur she ever shed. Sticking around here and there where we didn’t want it, in our eyes sometimes. For two days it all disappeared, one neighborhood licking at the next. Our thighs slashed by the thick brush we tore through looking for anything left to hold.
Bradley David Waters writes poetry, fiction, and essays that have appeared in HAD, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Action, Spectacle and numerous other publications and anthologies. He’s also the blended-genre senior editor at jmww journal.
