Outside the grocery store: warm night, light rain. Christmas trees and the smell of Christmas trees. When our feet drag wet leaves onto the floorboard of your car, I think populations displaced by environmental changes. I’ve said it before. Being a mother means everyone is someone’s child.
We are speeding to your grandfather’s hospital bed. In Ardmore, Alabama, we pass a junkyard full of Fieros, fifty, a hundred, proving for a moment that anything is possible, or almost anything. Then, it’s three black bras hung to dry on a chain link fence, a pond with one glowing green bottle surrounded by ducks.
I remember reading how Darwin observed ostriches swimming to get across rivers. I turn to tell you but see the setting sun from the rearview, pinking the brown of your eyes, and say nothing. Some, Darwin said, use their wings as sails.
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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, Summerset Review, Laurel Review, Twelve Mile Review, Ligeia, and many others. She lives in Columbia, Tennessee.