Tender

Stefanie Kirby

I put the deer in the tree, tie the ribbon
on its neck. I name it softness. I want

its eyes to be leaves, to be something
worth leaving. Shade shrinks back

into roots, the way we disappear
into our own crooked dark. Sometimes

we forget things until they make a noise.
But what about the deer, you say.

Stefanie Kirby is the author of Fruitful (Driftwood Press, 2024), winner of the Adrift Chapbook Contest; Remainder (Bull City Press, 2025); and Opening (Glass Poetry Press, 2025). Her poetry appears in Best of the Net, West Branch, Pleiades, Sixth Finch, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review and elsewhere. She lives along Colorado’s Front Range with her family.