Marie Kressin

I don’t want to be a wife.

Shards of goose squawk blanket-snap
the meadow, cracking morning dust into crescendo
of flock and wing—each bird
taking flight like so many book pages thrumming
faster, faster, beating
all the way to the back cover, then snapping
shut.

The emptied sky is a kind of quiet
that sounds like bloodrush, like wanting another day
to barrel my body into.

Now, I’m filling my tires with air after the season’s first cold snap—
sleet plinks
a parabola melody—
one ice speck falls neatly
into my coat pocket, frozen slicing down my finger,
lodging under my thumb,
and melting.

Sometimes I wish I could disappear

suddenly and simply.
I want to vanish with all the scandal
of a kicked rock

ck-ck-ck—shOOoo—ping
into the black mouth of a culvert.

Don’t come looking for me.

Have you ever used your thumbnail to unlatch
a fresh pecan from its husk? Do you remember the sound

of each fleshy quadrant dropping to the grass? Hold me

and drop me.
I’m saying there’s no such thing as gone, no absolute
silence
because I want to convince myself
I’m not hurting you.

Darling,

can you believe there are no endings?
Do you hear me asking you

to let me go?

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Marie Kressin (she/her) is an MFA candidate at the University of the South. She has been published in Arkansas's Best Emerging Poets, Timber, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Marie was selected as Dairy Hollow’s 2023 Moondancer Fellow, and her poem “Dead Bird’s Skull” was nominated for the 2023 Best of the Net award. She lives and writes in Little Rock, Arkansas.