He held a baseball bat in his hand. Sounds scary
put that way, but who knows—maybe it was
just something for scratching his back. He waved
it like the arch that tells trombones and flutes
how long and how hard to cry. It was sad
and strange but not the kind of thing you’d drop-kick
into a sonnet. The street put down their forks
to watch like he was a burning building. At the time,
I didn’t really know how I felt about it.
I watched too. Watched his ears catch fire. Watched
him char and blacken like cookie.

Courtney King Kampa is an undergraduate writing student at the University of Virginia. She is a classically trained ballerina, recently worked as a lobbyist at the United Nations, and currently models for Seventeen magazine.