【Written by Gemma Feltovich】

I do not remember my great uncle’s name,
but I know the family folklore,
like something out of a García Márquez novel:
He was struck by lightning three times.

(Funny, isn’t it, how lightning is always in passive form—
lightning does not strike people, but people
are struck by lightning nonetheless.)

The first gave him seizures. The second
put him in a wheelchair. The third killed him.
I don’t know if he was in the peculiar
unshakeable habit
of standing in empty fields
holding metal umbrellas.
I don’t know if he had a feud with Zeus,
or was cursed by an ex-lover,
but there it is.

I don’t remember his name.
I remember the funeral—
the memorial service was meant to be at our house,
but when we opened the front door
the ceiling was raining

(my sister had forgotten to turn off the bath water)

and I sat on the drenched carpet and pretended
I was steering a boat through a storm.
Steering a boat through a storm…

I loved this story when I was little
and too young to know that death
was something to be sad about.
I rejoiced in telling my classmates
about my great uncle who was struck
by lightning. Maybe

I wanted them to be impressed.

That he survived it twice?
That it kept coming back?

That even if it killed him eventually,
there was something that made him special—
something so strange the sky took notice.
Maybe it was trying to tell him something
important and forgot its own static electric
touch, the thing Einstein studied,
the thing Tesla tried to box.

Maybe the lightning wanted to kiss him
all his life and only gave into the impulse
those three times—

What a dangerous enterprise, to be desired.