This morning over a text from M, tears fell onto my toast and I ate them. She awoke in the night and had to ask, Would you sing with me again? Like it was any other day before her cancer. Like when we drove with wind in our hair, belting out any old tune, bare feet dancing out car windows on an imaginary dance floor. Or when we went to the rooftop with her guitar and sang “Love Rescue Me.” Or in the north country, at the campfire with quilts and The Violent Femmes. Or the time we threw stones in the ocean to a hymn. I swallowed each tear, careful not to miss a drop.
Laura Rockhold is a poet and visual artist living in Minnesota. She is the inventor of the golden root poetic form and 2022 recipient of the Bring Back The Prairies Award and Southern MN Poets Society Award. Her work is published or forthcoming in: Birdcoat Quarterly, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Cider Press Review, deLuge Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, The Hopper, Yellow Arrow Journal and elsewhere. She holds a BS from the University of Minnesota. Find her at: http://www.laurarockhold.com and on Instagram @laurarockhold_.
Change Seven Magazine 