Independence Night

Last night, I took a walk
with a blank page
and his dog.
I didn’t feel the rain
until it stopped falling.
We tramped through fields of commas,
two lonely, run-on sentences.
The air reeked of dying
fireworks.
Above, swollen and red and angry
was a moon
from another planet.
When I was seven,
I came home to new pictures
on my bedroom walls.
Of course, I threw a fit
on my strawberry rug.
Demanded their return.
The last boy,
he ended the story
before I finished reading it.
Plucked the pen from my hand
midsentence
not even leaving me with the dignity
of punctuation.
Now, I take walks with blank pages,
refuse to see words pressed on their skin,
put them back on the shelf
unopened.

Malka Herman is a writer and lawyer based in California. Before law school, she worked for Penguin Random House, lived on a ranch, and taught creative writing in Hong Kong. You can find more of her work in Toasted Cheese, The California Law Review, and William & Mary Law Review Online.