 The mustard field, girls from the Sati school wander. And of course, most of you probably know, but the Sati, the right of Sati demands a woman emulate herself on her husband's funeral pyre. This is devoted to a certain Sati school in Rajasthan. The mustard field, plunging into the button blooms, they vanish, swish of departure, delight and giddiness unleashed among the sprays of yellow. Brassika by the hundred have multiplied under the hands of rain, four petaled sons the size of fingernails, brushing against cheeks, festooning the moment. Each girl's bright encounter brings her to tremble, confirm her pluck with hands on another's shoulder or scarf, thrill and nervous hesitation working in tandem, a rushing forward along with a pulling back. The leader jerky with stops, afraid of misstepping. The one behind her, slipperless on the cracked earth and the graceful one with a star of leucoderma on her neck. Through the tunneled secrets of dust mode and bitter honey they glide. Through the flowers that will give way to seeds of premonition, but not yet. Now each second is rinsed by a leafy susserous, the need to venture further than the lasso of adult voices can pitch and bring them back. Now the percussive slap of feet, only the wake of arms in breast strokes, pressing the gold multitudes aside, is visible. They have wandered further than the absences each will grow into, scarf veiling her averted face while mustard seeds spatter from skillets of hot oil years from now. What remains after the pollen dust is brushed off after the slow backbone of light is relinquished is a long wait for virtue. A thumbprint is a glimpse of something that actually happened to my brother-in-law. The moment was all window, driving over a mountain's edge as he gathered fallen peanuts from the NT passenger seat had been predicted days before by soothsayers who read his wife's thumbprint. They spoke of glass blocking the sky and floor. The call from hospital came. She listened through the crackle of long distance, fears flaring open over the thoughts of a single fir tree that had stopped his drop, a spinny of them, verticals swaying, married to sun and water, and rapids below dashed to white shards by rocks one moment, seamless the next. After the call from hospital, silence grew. Silences grew under small sounds, branches of fly beating against glass, leaves stuck in a cobweb, tapping out reports from wind. She swept them together, fueled a fire, and burned the predictions. But random words kept escaping with fly ash, amethyst, dove, bone. The hospital was without anesthetics, needles disinfected over flame. On his return, a squash from a farmer's market swelled so large, the fridge door opened and rolled out, and it rolled out. So the stretch marks deepened into cracks, a full year without rain. She could still hear Soothsayer chants, hovering over the inky dark oval of her impression on paper. Held her knowledge like a tablespoon of epsom salts, fizzing on her tongue, without a drink to wash it down. Going to end with the Afghanistan poem. Afghanistan end of 87. Another true story. Candlelight skids up a child who sleepwalks with eyes wide. Outside, airwaves lower than sound or shudder, are rattling cups, smashing windows, within a miles wide circumference. In her dream, trees clinging to their blood apricots swell with the darkness of curfew nights. Touch one and it explodes. Her father's vigil is crumpled by insomnia. Was that wind shift or voices shrilling above the crack of footfalls, far beyond view? Dust floats on a cup of water. It is the hour of curtains jerked from grip. It is another month, the slow ache of sky, sinking through his search. Her coat slumped against a tree. He wants to tell her about its bent limbs, elbows of trunk and branches, gestures fed by water and anticipation, all leaning against granitic rocks. When the clouds part, a strike on a thin stock sways back and forth, like a clock keeping its tempo of hunger against the backdrop of a valley bright with silence, a chewed up fruit with her tooth marks. Arrows of distress scatter like nightbirds from the open mouth of falling. In our wind, a half-shout running through it. Thank you. Thank you.