An Old Friend Posts His Mother’s Death
Melissa Fite Johnson
Tree Fire
Laurie Marshall
A few brief lines. What gets me is
how uncomplicated his love,
the way I’ll feel when my dog dies.
I’m not making light. My heart is
a bowl when it holds my dog.
A sieve when it holds my mother.
My old friend and his sister held
their mother’s hands when she died.
When my mother was in my life, I shook
her hands away anytime she reached for me.
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Diode, and elsewhere, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Melissa, a high school English teacher, is a poetry editor for The Weight, a journal for high school students, and Porcupine Lit, a journal by and for teachers. She and her husband live with their dogs in Lawrence, KS. Find Melissa on Instagram and BlueSky.
Laurie Biggs Marshall is an award-winning writer and collage artist in Northwest Arkansas. Her stories have been longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, selected for Best Small Fictions 2022 and was awarded the Lascaux Review Prize in Fiction in 2021. Her art has been featured in Flash Frog, Rejection Letters, Mayday Magazine, among others. She is currently in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. Find examples of her work at www.SeeLaurieWrite.com, and find her on Instagram and BlueSky.