► Play audio

Click the play button below to listen to Didi Jackson read “Wild.”

When we moved our cat to our new house, 
the first thing he did was slip up
the chimney without doubt or fear 
after feeling a slight draft of cold air
escape from the fireplace’s black mouth.
He was looking for a way out. A way home.
He scrambled up what we’d thought would
become the heart of the house. Nothing
could lure him down. No food lifted on cardboard
or softly sung ballads. He wedged himself beyond
the narrow throat and sat on the smoke shelf,
safe in soot and ash.

When I was little, we didn’t have a fireplace.
Even though it could snow in Florida,
no one had flues to clean or creosote to peel
from brick, no ash thin as onionskin to watch
take wing and fly above flames. I was a sleepwalker
through most of those days. A passenger in
my own life. I couldn’t look
to my family and see myself reflected there. I was
born to no one. I was wild. A lawn full of dandelion seed heads,
lion’s-tooth, all waiting for breath. And when the water
seemed to hiss down by the lake, I knew it was
to me it called. You’ll have to do better than that, 
said the grackle, drinking at the water’s edge, 
wedged between reeds of cattails. To be wild, that is.