Turn Left at the Split Maple, and I Am Not There

by Mary Simmons

Melody Zimmerman

In the summer, in the woods behind Mary’s house, the woods not owned by Mary’s parents, we searched, without her parents, for snakes. When we searched for snakes, we were jungle explorers, and one of us would always die, though we never found any snakes, and sometimes we would touch dead birds, study their dark eyes, touch our lips, take turns laying in the grass. When we laid in the grass, we were no better than the snakes we never found in the woods behind Mary’s house, where the blackberries grew until they didn’t, and birds died and kept dying, and Mary’s parents would call us in for blackberries, not from the woods they didn’t own, even when they still grew. And her parents washed the blackberries, and they stained our fingers dark; we touched our lips.

I remember. I do. Let me have this.

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Mary Simmons is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in or forthcoming from Moon City Review, One Art, Beaver Magazine, Yalobusha Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, and others.