By Sarah Harder
The anatomy of your streets sticks like salt deposits
to my palm lines, embroidering my skin in curvatures
resembling the Red River, the Assiniboine, the Golden
Boy. You birth winter like larvae all at once and with a whisper
of wing flutters. Did you know you’re named
after muddy banks, the spring floods that reconfigure
your skeleton’s basic geography? They dredge your roads
until potholes sink into your permanent impression.
But I only know you in summer, when dragon-
flies tattoo the sky with their wing patterns
and sunflowers track the daylight hours with their heads.
I promised to make it in time this year, but the miles
twist around my feet, encasing them like a mosquito
in sap and I am left threading my way between state
borders with nothing but a thread of salt and an atlas.
Sarah Harder is a senior at the University of South Florida who enjoys spoiling her roommate’s puppy when no one is looking. She is majoring in Creative Writing and minoring in Psychology.
