by Maggie Smith
Once, while a man sped me down
a back road in a gray pickup,
I memorized my younger face
in the passenger side mirror,
burned the opal at my throat
and the white secondhand blouse—
tiny lilacs, puckered sleeves—
into the undersides of my eyelids.
My hair streamed
the color of hay out the window.
Lettering on the mirror told me
that despite how close
I appeared, I may have been closer.
Something lit the opal’s pink fires
nearer the surface than I knew.
Things were not what they seemed.
There was nothing I could reach
out and touch. We parked
in a cloud of gravel dust. I hurled rocks
into the quarry’s dark mouth,
bible black, and lied
about hearing them hit bottom.
Inside every stillness, I believed
something moved.
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Last updated October 30, 2022