by Mary Kate Cranston
A dusty road that I think of as mine,
leads to fields of grass as high as my elbow;
some dried,
some green,
tangled and dependent, like my little sister’s
scrambled hair when she first wakes up.
October sun hangs low; shadows reach
for the parched dirt, something furry darts
before me as my feet find their way, a cushion
of leaves and wildflowers.
Someone calls
my name. Go ahead, call all you want,
you will never find me – now that I’m covered
by slender
wheat plumes and withered milkweed; by pods
popped open as though sneezing near
a bag of flour, flossy, light cotton flies,
carrying me away.
Mary Kate Cranston is a writer who currently resides in Washington, DC. Her work has been published in Written In Arlington (Paycock Press), a 2020 anthology of poems, in addition to The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and you can follow her on Instagram @marykatecranston
Emerge Literary Journal 