by Jamie Carros

The ball drops on a new year.
My fists drop on my lap.
My baby drops his drumsticks.

Her blanket lifted,
a tube tucked under. Eleanor keeps Ty beanies in her dresser in case her grandchild returns still a child.

Frost and grass form a bristling surface too sharp to tread. A clean silver coat slicked on the back of the field, long shadows of bare trees plus my own. Is my shadow long? Is it tied tight to me? I think

of my son’s hands, think how
the dirt under our nails is from the same place.

Jamie Carros is a writer and painter living in North Carolina with her family and working on her first novel. Jamie received her MFA in Studio Arts from The University of California, Davis. Her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine and Paraselene.