Poetry Contest Winners :: Eighth Contest :: Third Place Winner

disheartening epilogue to cold days

she's hanging up the sheets outside, little kid shorts
shirts and elusive socks
long underwear from a long winter

wearing nothing but a blue dress
melting her into the heat-filled sky

a wisteria-covered lawn
and a weeded dream
the porch is empty like remorse, sweat is dropping
between her shoulder blades

well, she's barely
twenty and holding it in
stringing up clothes on the line all the while

from a piled up basket of laundry
she sighs and unfolds the

short memories, a shorter romance, and
a white starched innocence shortest

of all