By Tammy C. Greenwood

these sheets billowing on the line
would become a sail,
carry me away from this body
which now rejects every vice.
Take me to that shirtless girl
in the shelled driveway
making mudpies in rain-soaked soil.
To the font of sand and silt
collecting liquefied heaven.
The patch where grass never grew,
where the earth saved a space
just for me. Cleansed of inhibitions,
alabaster skin and underwear
now the color of excavated clay.
I’m sure she never questioned
belonging, or tomorrow—or even me.
Arms and legs flapped into mud angels
in a dusk of fireflies
floating in her own bioluminescent sea.
Or how when she dried in the summer sun
she stood like a terra cotta god
taking her place among the ancients
brimming with all the answers.

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Tammy C. Greenwood is pursuing her MFA in Poetry at San Diego State University. She was a finalist for the 2026 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize and her work appears in Bellevue Literary Review, Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, Rattle, Pinch, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her chapbook is The Winged and the Horned (Finishing Line Press, 2026). tammygreenwoodart.com