Ellen Stone

I turned to field when you left

Blown open, apart, the way a gale cuts through the back acres
before the corn is down. Emptied by absence, a shirt crumpling
without a body in it. The room, air siphoned.  How soft

your face, easy lips spilled open like a wave that halts, stops
in its crest, lace spread out forever. You had tried all morning
to hang on, or maybe let go, I could not tell, only heard the small

wind of you, your little chuffs of breath, that tiny rhythm. I did not
know you were trudging still, your last steps up the back mountain
until the top where you could see the wideness of what comes after.

When you were ready to leap, leave your body like a seahawk sheds
its bones when it takes wing, I was gathering myself, my things
as if I could take it all with me while you were letting go, laying

burdens down. And what could I have done were I there with you,
holding your hand? Help you shrug off this heavy place, its thick
coat you had to wear some lonely winters, the clasps, wide buttons

you could no longer manage. Let you go— balloon, moth, dragonfly
on your way out of your careful skin, that tight container, a window
curtain now where the breeze subsides. Empty boat, overturned.

Ellen Stone advises a poetry club at Community High School, co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat! and edits Public School Poetry in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013) and What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020). Ellen was a 2024 Writer in Residence at Good Hart Artist Residency. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.