Michele Wolf: “Zebras in a Field”

The younger woman—hollowed out, reduced
To a shadow wrapped in skin—allowed
The older one, nearly her duplicate,
To enfold her. They had both seen the knife, 
A small, glinty blade with a pearlized handle,
When it was set beside the younger woman’s 
Thigh. “But you are not dead,” the older woman,
Unable to speak, had wanted to say, “although 
It may seem so. You will live an abundant life.
Someday you will drive, after seventeen hours 
Aloft, along a paved road edging a clutch
Of tumbledown farms when a herd of zebras 
Will race to meet the wooden fence—whinnying, 
Tails flapping—oscillating your vision, the total scroll
Of what you know, with the whirl of their stripes.”