It’s torrential and I have never found myself Hidden sweet between the pages of a good book on a hot sun day or in the lyrics of slow sung song but here at the slid door with just loose enough a latch here at the edge of the world where the wetness on the pane pools at my fingertip, pressed I am cool and it is blood warm drowning rain, duck-perfect rain to fill your lungs with rain to fix your soul Rain to wash in, dig your toes to root walk heavy stepped through sodden grass

I remember the house on the other side of town with dogs chained near the door, how you entered first and scattered the floor with newspaper for the woman about to birth a fox. I leaned out the window to watch bats form a funnel cloud, turn white as the moon circled their swarm like a drain. Regret is such a drag when it’s the reason to board things up to gut every room where we existed at the wrong time. Deadlocked beneath the awning I imagined a thermometer broken in the pa

Habiba Warren: When did you first start writing? Have you always known you wanted to be a writer? Michele Randall: I wrote really awful poetry as a kid—I think because I was trying to process my world and because I was a reader. I was the student with a novel inside the math book, the history book. The student who procrastinated on all other homework just to read. After high school, I charmed my way into working for a lawyer. Transcribing his dictation taught me how to argue,