by Megan Duffy

I do not want ties.

The branches of the linden angle down here,

do not move but for the wind.

The sinking sun is mindless—it does what it does—

again and again it returns to its floating shelf.

Just here is a spider winding her way up to her swollen eggs.

She clings to her creation, a dangle of instinct housed

in hyaline weave, barely detectable against white-not-white-gilded cloud.

Never having wanted to become a mother,

I have resisted such primitive threads. Yet I spin them out reflexively

each time I touch her face, each time I kiss his forehead goodnight.

But this evening I have left them sleeping in their beds,

have walked to the glen to sit, untethered.

Relief from reliance comes to me like sharpened sight—

the muskrat sinks again in fetid mud.

Its tail is a hollow stick, slapping out the current.

Above my head, the luna moth hazards a guess:

nothing matters but flight.

So agrees the range insect, one I cannot name,

that sits on the blanket beside me, waiting for me to rise.

Megan Duffy has been reading and writing poetry since she was a child. Her poems have appeared Off the Coast, Blood Lotus, and The Wildreness House Literary Review, among other journals. Poetry is forthcoming in The Lindenwood Review. She holds a BA in Literature, Writing, and the Arts from Eugene Lang College: The New School For Liberal Arts and an MA in English Literature from Rutgers University.