waking in the woods

by Mary Simmons

after Mary Oliver

This morning, I saw my heartache

on the backs of insects fleeing 

my body as I stirred. I woke

with only what I had been before, 

that which I could have been floating

among milkweed fluff, the grass beneath

and around shaped to some signifier

of all the versions of me.

A red-winged blackbird from a low branch

shook her little head, and I nodded. 

She took through the leaves,

and I gathered myself, padded my pockets

with dewed moss, for protection, or faith.

I stacked smooth rocks in prayer

for some unnamable lightness, for something

I could carry long after the moss crumbled

into fabric, long after the wind stopped

strumming music from the weeds.

A flurry of sparrow wings, startled

at the thought of me, and I brought my lips

to the earth, and she knew. I think she knew.

Mary Simmons (she/they) is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in or forthcoming from Moon City Review, One Art, Beaver Magazine, Yalobusha Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, and others.