by Hannah Feustle

He eats kumquats from her palm, all frothing white breath, as though unaware—that metallic sling of slaughter sword. She understands nothing if not that, how he walked out knowing what surely had to come. Oh, to be so still. Her bones play under her skin. She holds the fruit, like golden grapes. If she were in his place, she’d hold them in crook mud-caked leg. In isolation, how lovely, frosted grass, sharp crunch, the huff of breath, the sun-white flash of silver. Heavy banner-flap in weak wind. Taken alone it could be any day.

Hannah Feustle is a first-year PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received her MFA from the University of Memphis, where she was the recipient of the 2019 Deborah L. Talbot Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her fiction is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, and her poetry is forthcoming or published in LandLocked and Chautauqua. Find her on Twitter at @HannahFeustle