First Breath By Jennifer Handy

By The Rising Phoenix Review on June 22, 2024

First Breath

I woke up coughing, almost choking,
in that hazy hour of the morning
before the sun has risen
when you can see,
but barely,
everything a shade of gray.

Other people I knew that year,
those like me,
lived in old school buses,
sometimes painted over,
others still the standard yellow
recognizable at almost any distance.
Some of the buses had working engines,
while others were missing alternators,
axles, or transmissions, and were
going nowhere,
stranded.

I had a working car, but I was living
in a tent
on forty acres
with a natural spring
but no well or running water.

That day, the one I woke up coughing,
I went outside at sunrise
to survey the skies,
the way I did each morning,
to see how bad the smoke was.
Some days you couldn't see the sun at all
till it was nearly overhead.
The sky looked no worse than usual,
usual for that summer,
where you might see the sun
for no more than six or seven hours,
like early winter in Alaska.

Still, something was very wrong.
I could feel it, almost taste it.
There were no grasshoppers,
no birds, almost no sound at all.

My car looked strangely pale
and so did the large pine tree
near my tent.

They were covered in fine white powder
that blew off easily with my breath
and turned my fingertips
not white but blackish-gray.
It was then I realized
I was amid a sea of ash.

Breakfast was a solemn affair
that day and all the days
that summer.
I ate cold food from a cooler,
not daring to light a match,
not wanting to risk
even the smallest cooking fire.

It happened to be a town day,
and in town I heard the news.
The Dixie Fire had reached
the town of Greenville
the night before
and burned it to the ground.
The people there lost everything.

The ashes from all their homes
were on my tent, and I was choking
on the dust of their belongings.

By Jennifer Handy

Biography:

Jennifer Handy explores sexuality, psychological trauma, mentalillness, homelessness, severed family relationships, and environmental issuesthrough poetry. Her poetry chapbook California Burning is forthcoming(Bottlecap Press Fall 2024) and her poetry chapbook Dirt is forthcoming(Finishing Line Press Spring 2025). Her poetry has been published in The Closed Eye Open, CommuterLit, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Loud Coffee Press, Wild Roof Journal.