She used to sit on the forest floor and I would cut her hair until it piled up onto the ground, like ash. Tonight, her name is a leaf covering my left eye. The right I close for the wind to stitch shut with thread from the dress she wore into the grave where the determined roots of the tree are making a braid around her body.
From The Lesser Fields. Copyright © 2009 by Rob Schlegel. Used with permission of The Center for Literary Publishing.