SILT HAS COLLECTED IN MY CELLS
S.J.M.
The print on my favorite shirt
crackles off,
gone soft
together with my nerves.
A new age rests
on his shoulders.
My fondest memory—
twisting snow peas
off the vine.
A new kind of
loneliness sent off
down the river toward
the geese in the heat
of July
and yes,
a gentle hand cupping a nape
under the cover of
silence and sky.
It’s all fragmented.
There were no words
for the longest time until
a finger was plunged
into the deep to poke
at a river snail
and we realized it’s stupid
to guard feeling by burying it
in the marrow of our
bones.
Kelli Charland (she/her) attends SUNY Plattsburgh for English literature and creative writing. She has worked as the copy editor for North Star, SUNY Plattsburgh’s student-run literary magazine, and as an editorial assistant and social media manager for Saranac Review. One of her essays appears on Saranac Review’s blog. She was awarded 1st place for the Robert Frost Memorial Poetry Prize in May 2024 for her poem, “A letter to my amygdala.”