Cure
A woman I don’t know sits at world’s edge,
she wears red pants, holds her hands to her cheeks,
silently weeps into sand soon to be tide-drenched.
What could make anyone cry in this pristine place,
on this immaculate day? Has her mother died
or is her husband leaving?
Or is she dying and leaving?
Does she want the wind to lift her over the fetch,
then drop her gently in the flat sea?
Her bones are too thin to sink,
she’d float for years until one day I’d find
her washed up like a hollow spiraled shell.
Robin Dellabough‘s debut collection, Double Helix (2022), includes a Pushcart Prize-nominated poem. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Gyroscope, Yellow Arrow, Stoneboat, Halfway Down the Stairs, Mom Egg Review, Blue Unicorn, Negative Capability, and other publications and anthologies.
The Marbled Sigh 