Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Wendy Hallmark, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
where, in the humid, I girl again, and hermit, a reluctant amphibian, run circles—relearning how to breathe this percentage. Of leg ache and preemptive grief. It rains alternate days while alarm systems are installed, sprinklers tested. I assume sometimes the passenger’s seat, sometimes the driver’s, wary, everywhere, of deer after lettuce and roses. Amid renovation, I trip and sweat—as if muscle wept memory—watch my mother through glass or she, me; we tread water together until thunder beckons. The only way I could take after her was to grow utterly different. So I did. Barefoot, we are more tender of the injured, of our belonging anywhere. Shod, I lengthen hillward, climb, knowing. Every storm damages branches and wires, deepens the rooted green
Ceridwen Hall is a poet and book coach. She is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press) and Excursions (Train Wreck Press). Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.