When my first morning step through the doorway landed on your crawling
toward breakfast, maybe, or meeting or underside of branch,
I couldn’t help but gasp at the weight of myself on your body.
Under me, you became wrapping paper, unskinned, robbed of its form.
You became boiled chewing gum fused to summer pavement.
Became pinecone flake severed from its web of fraying sisters.
Became a final dance, twitching like a dry leaf or a salted
butterfly. The woman watching said it is like this: her husband must bless
each roadkill, each fly-circled carcass, as if the small word gives light to curious passage.
She said I must bless you, bless you for living while I go on stepping
where I shouldn’t, putting my foot down on what isn’t mine.
Carrie George Carrie George is a poet, photographer, and NEOMFA candidate. She is the current graduate fellow for the Wick Poetry Center in Kent, OH, where she teaches poetry to people of all ages and backgrounds. Her work has appeared in Scribendi, Spectrum Literary Journal, and Grub Street. You can find her at www.carriegeorge.blog.