by Meghan Kemp-Gee
Hold this in your mouth, like a secret stolen
off the bone.
Bathe this in orange-scented water, sea
salt-sunlit
olive oil, the missing child smiling
on posters.
Go on. Tell her how, in the code of gray-
scale sketches
predicting her future ten years gone, she
will wear her
beautiful dark hair. Go on and hold this
in your mouth.
Meghan Kemp-Gee is the author of THE ANIMAL IN THE ROOM (2023) and WHAT I MEANT TO ASK: A CHAPBOOK (2022). She also co-created CONTESTED STRIP, the world’s best comic about ultimate frisbee (and soon to be a graphic novel, ONE MORE YEAR).
Emerge Literary Journal 