Murky water creeps and sneaks around every corner, every oak. Licks a dolomite divan and then swallows my sixteenth birthday, her graduation, a random Tuesday rendezvous beneath a falling canopy. Shoves and tugs and tumbles them down river. Buries them under branches and mud like a mind mired in grief.

debris heap 

I sift through silt 
through soaked boxes 

through frayed clippings 
and her father’s eulogy 
disowning her that junkie 

Bio: Colleen M. Farrelly