by Jeremy Michael Reed

She described him once as “took to wandering.”
The picture I’ve seen of him is drunk
with fishing line, friends, and glass bottles.
This passed down version of him remains.
But then today she tells me he’d come visit.
She remembers him lying in bed with her
to calm her from fear the rain lent her in rhythm
against shingles on the roof, and that he slept
alongside her until she slept. Breath for breath,
each part of him exists, love and all else still
present at once, a combination that has me
returning to his grave, past the Salvation Army,
those waiting out rain under the bridge,
my knowing what stone says and still driving. 



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Jeremy Michael Reed holds a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee, where he was editor-in-chief of Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts and assistant to Joy Harjo. His poems and essays are published in Still: The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He is an associate editor for Sundress Publications and an assistant professor of English for Westminster College in Fulton, MO.