The comet was a long-haired star
So quiet in the woods,
headed back toward that girl from the future.
it had always been so quiet—
It twisted through the sky, singing After.
How long had she been walking?
It was not her mother, its pain no angel,
Who’d braided her hair?
but shed intimate breath through the cold trees until
Maybe it was winter
it went dense and changeable as the wind
and this was her cold neck,
she kept in the pocket of her dress.
this her cold belly—
Had this always been what she wanted: strange lie of light?
What was that in the sky?
Over her it came calling
(It had always been so quiet)
to tell or to burn,
That cry—
to find her body
what could she say
and be itself re-membered
but grackle, alder, afraid—
and so she stopped between black wings to
tell me, tender, let me hold—
open her hands.

Sally Rosen Kindred is the author of two poetry collections from Mayapple Press, No Eden (2011) and Book of Asters (2014), and her most recent chapbook is Darling Hands, Darling Tongue (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). She has received poetry fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her poems have appeared in Quarterly West, Linebreak, The Journal, and on Verse Daily.