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      Nature Poem

       The Appalachian Trail

      SARAH SALA

      In 1988 Claudia Brenner and her girlfriend, Rebecca Wight, planned to hike a section of the remote Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania. They encountered a stranger who shot both of them, killing Rebecca.

      ……..

      For a little while, there was a black butterfly with us.

      ……..

      X later claimed he thought he was deadening

      what was deer

      ……..

      A universe bullet wound creates a cavity that expands and then collapses in the split

      atom it takes a summer’s day bullet to blink

      ……..

      X wept in his cell to learn a lesbian had survived his horrific attack.

      See you later, he called at the campground.

      ……..

      Rebecca, that May afternoon, we wept reclaimed our bodies in the secluded thicket

      when you drove your galaxy pelvis across mine

      The same look you flashed the day we met

      I felt a lifetime drain from Pennsylvania the sphere

      in seconds

      ……..

      What was it made X think since he never found

      love

      he should X-out someone else’s?

      ……..

      My dear, Rebecca: you bled out in a forest along with me

      our futures

      I bound your words up in my chest to a songbird

      Get behind the tree. Your direction life-giving.

      After the massacre, I covered you in the blue sleeping bag

      I never wanted you to feel cold.

      every drop

      of my damned devotion

      hesitation

      To leave you there, living.

      ……..

      Four blazing miles I retraced our trail like a love letter to the highway

      scraped over fallen logs warding off the night

      my skull smoke escaping the shooter’s lips

      a beehive of shock

      an engine of surveillance

      a white towel plugging my exit wounds

      ……..

      X’s reckless ammunition designed using calculations and data gathered

      from previous testing

      perfect for small game .22 barrel action rifle

      ……..

      ER doctors

      threw me up against the periodic table of elements

      odds

      Rebecca, your parents cremated your remains

      before I could touch your hair left intensive care.

      After the murder,

      the third disappearing act.

      “Nature Poem” was first published in Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ)