By: Claire T. Jennings
I say “Can you open the circles?”
And realize my mistake
as my husband turns the slow turn
of the concerned and I point to the curtains
and draw circles with my fingers
and say “curtains, I meant curtains”
as if the right word had been sitting
on a lake on a late summer afternoon
in a small sailboat
somewhere I have never been
like Michigan or Mississippi.
And my young husband smiles and
raising one pierced eyebrow
opens the curtains
as a bird circles
quietly in my brain,
looking for a place to land.
Claire is a writer and photographer living in Los Angeles. She was chosen to perform in the Los Angeles storytelling festival and has been a guest speaker at the University of Santa Barbara Literary Symposium.
Claire has been published in the Eastern Iowa Review and in their Best Lyric Prose Anthology, Dreamers Creative Writing and Chaleur magazine. Her lyric essay “In the Hollow of a Mother” was nominated in 2018 for The Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net and Best American Essay.
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