Michelle Hendrixson-Miller
The air opens into cooler air, and we say nothing. Not hello. Not I miss you. We move the chairs and beds we own around to maximize space. When flood waters rise elsewhere, we somewhere scoff or shrug. More and more, what we don’t do builds an arsenal against us. Not doomed yet — but here, the upturned wheelbarrow and drowned cows. When our future selves look back, they hold us in contempt, picking what we want to moan about. Spoiled melons. The hills burnt black. Yet, there was a time when colors floated through our minds without words, a time when a cloud in the shape of a turtle plowed our thoughts into fields. Look, we had to learn for ourselves how to notice the miracles. How, as children, we once sat in the back of a Ford Pinto, not burning. How, one day, we lost nothing more than the cap to the olive oil and, for a little while, our keys.
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Michelle Hendrixson-Miller (she/her) received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, where she served as poetry editor of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Thrush, One, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, One Art, Rust & Moth, The Summerset Review, Laurel Review, Twelve Mile Review, Ligeia, and many others. She lives in Columbia, Tennessee.