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On the first warm day we went out
on the back porch to watch our daughter
spider across the weather-worn bones
of the swingset, trying to make it across
without touching the ground. The birds
were back, drawling into the afternoon sky,
and beetles of water droplets crept
down my glass, soaking into the soft wood
on the porch rail. Gone were the thoughts
of the knife-edged winter, the things we said
that bit into each others’ skin like snowfall,
the grip of frost along the spine, the way
we withered and blackened in the cold,
the frozen, jagged pieces we left glittering
around us. Instead today was about
the new warm wind ruffling our clothes,
bright leaves sprouting from the hydrangeas,
our daughter’s foot so perilously close
to the tangle of grass under the swingset,
warmed by the turn of a new season, a new chance.
Devon Neal (he/him) is a Kentucky-based poet whose work has appeared in many publications, including HAD, Stanchion, Livina Press, The Storms, and The Bombay Lit Mag, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently lives in Bardstown, KY with his wife and three children.
The Marbled Sigh 