Sarah
she bounces, rolls like a boy
the swaying all in her shoulders and her boots
even when she isn’t wearing boots
and she skims the sidewalk, slinging
a grin over her shoulder, a dare
like the jacket she wears on one finger
crooked, each saccade staccato
quicker than my thoughts strung together
but lazier too—she might write them down
might hum them to the crickets
or she might not (there will always
be more thoughts, more crickets)—
one arm up, elbow pointing the way home
the other jangling at her side so you know
how hard she works to make weight
to make the world swell around her
without looking like she’s working
and later when it’s time to hit the hideout
she’ll swing a leg over and pedal hard
watching not the road but the sky
as she thunders through the clouds again
Laura S. Marshall is a writer and editor who lives in New England. She studied linguistics at Queen's University in Canada and at the University of British Columbia. She has studied writing at the Ashbery Home School, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at UMass Amherst, and the College of Our Lady of the Elms. Her work appears or is forthcoming in literary publications including Sinister Wisdom, decomP magazinE, Califragile, Epigraph Magazine, Junoesq, and the Queen's Feminist Review, as well as newspapers and trade magazines.
