A white expanse can either reel in a lion fish or a sturgeon from a deep well, or baffle the poet to her knees.

If the latter, the poet freezes solid, waiting for spring to thaw like a miracle, a hole in the ice, an aha! of house sparrows returning home

to rebuild their nests. The tomb-bound poet confides in the moon that listens but offers no answers. Silence beckons like a small mercy.

Longing tastes bittersweet. They say a writer writes even when they’re not, even in the grave. A poet never dies. A poet broods and brews

in her little pile of ash until she is ready to cry, cough up mud, and stitch her yard with rows and rows and rows of daffodils and tulips,

gardens of strawberry and leeks, orchards of plum, apricot, fig, fertilized from the rot of her own corpse, fed with the placenta

​​        of her own rebirth.

Prompts used (tags are the poets’ IG handles):

@loisofthehearth - “small mercies I forget to thank” @kaytpoems - “winter as a poet’s death” @alexismromo - “silence beckons” @itsashenelthing - “longing tastes bittersweet” @gigi.flanard - “confides in the moon that listens but offers no answers”