I Am Not
Liz Marlow

I Am Not

            a woman
with hair turning
black, like soil
after it burns,
to gray like clouds
forming as fields,
mountains, and cities
burn, taking up
the entire sky.
I do not have circles,
those light pink
areolae my children bit
after they exhausted
milk contained
under that surface.
I am not a mother
somehow still
yearning for that bite.
I am not
a nightmare
like the one I awoke
from this morning
where we all burned
to ash: the earth
responded with more fire;
the sky responded
by turning black
but not producing rain,
letting the fire burn
until it burned itself out.
I am not a dream,
but maybe in one:
a faraway shore
and forest are ablaze,
but not where I live.
You see that ring
around the moon?
That is me,
waiting on the sun
to burn me down.

Liz Marlow

lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband and two children. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, B O D Y, The Carolina Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.