by E.R. Donnelly

How can they not know we have found
one another far beyond this season.
I think of you as my face bends to water,
its warm brown depth, my comfort.
New sun startles the minnows
and their black and fragile hearts.
Plants grow to break themselves
upon me as I bend low,
my throat, as soft as milk.

Above, you sit in the hushed gap of trees
that have come to hint
of the losses we will know for months.

I see your eyes upturned
to the herald of the highway, wailing,
its movement such that we will never know.

More than our lives here on this bank, tied tight as ghosts.

E.R. Donnelly‘s work has appeared in a variety of publications including Great Lakes Review, Broad River Review, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. She lives on the East Coast with her family.