POETRY
“The Morning After the Wreck,” read by Casie Dodd.
The Morning After the Wreck
Scraping sheets
of mud off my new vintage oxfords.
Split ends tattered like leaf bits I just pricked
from the smiles in my sweater.
Will someone walk in? It’s early yet.
Staring at porcelain holding
an oversized satchel weighted
with all I could pull from the ditch. Twenty speckled
fragments to match the linoleum.
A college student’s life stained the color of rust.
Some books are spotless. Cradled in hidden
folds in my purse, redeemed by blue
flannel. Class notes are streaked
with green lines left by a lawn deader than I seem to be.
A public bathroom? How did I get here?
And it’s strange how some things stay white as Easter while
others bear the mark of what should have been the end.
Raccoon eyes webbed
to red spidery bursts. Are they mine?
The door creaks slowly open.
I hope you won’t look.
But instead you say Good Morning
and I’m caught somewhere between the o’s.
Casie Dodd lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas with her husband and two children. Her writing has appeared in This Land, Dappled Things, and others. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of St. Thomas Houston.
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Photo Credit: “Vòltati” by kekkoz, Flickr.com.
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