Till Death Do Us Part

Marin Leone

When Memory Is Not Reality

Clara Wodny

where does the sidewalk end? can we have a chance to plan ahead?

we’ve been there before, but it was different back then.

we didn’t see it coming, it caught us off guard was it childhood magic that made the damp grass shine, like the stars?

remember the things that caused us to laugh–the mistaken fruit, the red door, the stray stick, the mystery of it all.

how could we have known, the sidewalk’s end doesn’t always mean endless possibility?

we held hands that day, as sun showers summoned the ants to play rolling my eyes, while letting our fingers intertwine, still squeezing yours in mine. now old- er, hard- er, farth- er empty space doesn’t hold the excitement it once did replaced, instead by fear what if our sidewalks don’t end at the same time? will I be here, staring at concrete you, weightless floating in the sky?

Now that I have left the house

Sam Nelson

Now that I have left the house

I can feel that my shoulders are tense

Like a kindergartener reached for wet sand

And instead she grabbed the muscles at the top of my spine

And she held them

Bunched tightly

I wonder how it looked

The top of my spine arching out of a beach somewhere

The line where the shore meets the horizon only broken by the curve of my back

The knuckles of my spine protruding from me like sailors’ knots

A child with black hair and bare feet

Leaning over

Maybe she thought I had come from the ocean

That I had been carried ashore and buried in the sand

For her to find

Now I turn around to look at my childhood house

And wonder how it took me so long to realize

I am the child of someone’s child