Bluestems tangled in the chainlink fence where a clay red coyote hung quietly. This is a warning, mom said, and I nodded. She was doing better. Adjusting to the harsh chemicals and their side effects. We hiked to find the cabin, pear cacti, American beautyberry, the little bluestems. I remember she called them bluestems and I laughed, saying they weren’t blue at all, not really. Some orange and purple like the crayon pictures I would Monet for her in her hospital room. We came to a clearing. A farmer’s ranch. The coyote’s face burned in the fall sun. That evening in the cabin, I stood under the skylight opened to the thick country sky past midnight. I held a flashlight while my mother examined my body for fat black bugs making a home in my skin. Damn bloodsuckers, she cursed. Eyes closed. She dug the tweezers. Confused my freckles for creatures, for moles. When it was over, I sat on the splintering floor of the cabin, tracing the wound on my thigh where a tick fought removal until my mother drew dark blood. I pulled back my finger, my runny red insides glistened in the light of the round moon, 
not a sound but for the flicking of insects’ legs and wings on the window, and my mom next to me, plucking black bit by black bit out of herself, weeping alone.