by Elizabeth Hitchcock
Maybe that was the summer I feared water,
timid on teaming rocks.
I wanted to build a treehouse,
or catch marmots, living plump
under the deck.
The summer my body said
hsss
matched the rattler,
my misstep by the gate
and I begged,
Open.
The divisions between mind
and bodies more apparent
each time I let go of
acid in my stomach, and threw up by the pansies
on the path home.
It was the summer with cabin nights spent
blitzing beside fireflies with the assault rifle
and the shots
shook the dust by Mount Lassen.
On the hill above us,
your family argued about how to bury
the man who made possible
this reunion.
The sign nailed to the tree above
his “grave” reads:
“Here lies the sand heart
of a man self-made,
rest in the rust
of your blue paint can.”
Elizabeth Hitchcock is a poet about to graduate from Beloit College in Wisconsin. Hitchcock prefers to spend her freetime with coffee and cats. You can find her work published in The Linnet’s Wings, Common Ground Literary Review, and Bitterzoet Magazine.
