They say it doesn’t strike twice. But lightning is plural.

A chorus. One hundred touches per second. One hundred

tales in illegible cursive—each particular

                        as a girl in a crowd, my mother,

maybe, seeking relief from afternoon heat

close as skin. Hand over hand

in LaSourdesville Lake, out to a water-bound

merry-go-round—metal rod circled with rings—

from which children would twirl, swing, spin

into thin moments of flight, releasing to arc

beyond gravity’s hand, thrill in the pause

before falling. That day

            the sky darkened, my mother ignored voices

from shore. And here

            my grandmother wades into the story, hitching

her skirt, dragging her daughter to shelter, both lit

with anger. And lightning—

that liar—

            struck twice, arcing the merry-go-round.

Two touches. One body. She washed to the shore,

another twelve-year-old girl who believed she could ride

out the storm. My mother

            stood by the side of a pool in the rain,

telling this story. Charred, she said, and I felt it,

a fulgurite under my skin. Path of lightning—

through grandma, my mother, a stranger, myself.

I’ve heard church bells in France once sang

to scare away lightning. Even then, in an ocean

of polled wood, a girl—

lifting her eyes to the harrowing sky,

waiting for voices.