by Kelly Erin Gray

From a distance I couldn’t make
it out, I thought they were girls,
younger maybe, but just like us,
helping each other stand, just like us.

I turn my neck like a phrase
to watch the way their pale arms
hold the moon like light, reflecting
off water even in a dirty gutter.

I’m too near sighted, too honest
in the eyes, prone to being told
life stories in ways I shouldn’t
ever know from people I never will.

But they don’t look. They never
lift their heads from where they
fall into each other, in thought,
in prayer, in the tall wet grass.

We cross over to the other side
as the needle sinks into the grooves
of their record, cycling around
what veins they have left standing.

It’s all warped over now, like I’m meant
to remember something other than what
we hear, the voice of my father when
he said you can never go back home again.

Kelly Erin Gray is a writer and instructor based in Boston. Her writing has appeared in Maudlin House, Up The Staircase Quarterly, The Shore, and The River. She can be found online @kelly_erin_.