What I Might Have Said While Waiting with the Others to Unboard the Plane
Michelle Hendrixson-Miller
I know I hear it, the same things you do.
The birds interrupted by sirens.
The starlight interrupted by birds.
Not friends, but surely, we both love
the purgative in-breath of a morning snowfall.
And I bet we could agree on the goodness
of stop signs, having our missed wrecks,
our unmissed. I know I’m not the only one
that stalls in bronze sunsets, that plush
ionized air after storms. I’m guessing you also
might lick the salted insides of a broke-open geode,
stare into a winter tree’s black limbs to find
the bowl of our sky shattered and shattering.
You know the stink bug’s pre-historic shape
on the sill, inside the curtain. We both face it,
the decision to kill or not to kill,
which may be where we differ, where
if we spoke, we might argue, decide it’s not worth it.
Michelle Hendrixson-Miller lives in Columbia, TN. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte where she served as poetry editor on the inaugural issue of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared previously in Josephine Quarterly, and many other publications including Poems and Plays, The Moth, Adirondack Review, Still, The Fourth River, One, Harbor Review, Mudfish, Thrush, The Museum of Americana, and Chiron Review.