Somebody else
wore this dress
before me.
I feel her skin
slipping into it.
I feel her hands
work, crumpling
and smoothing
the skirts.
Then a cold finger
melts down my spine.
I’m pricked, I’m
shuddering.
She will wake me,
a midnight eye
at the misted pane.
A wind keening.
She cries in my sleep,
bringing me fragments
of dreams.
footprints indented snow
hunted or lost among drifts
a green summer mound
a blue butterfly, entangled
She lives in dark places‒
a closet, a basement,
under the bed.
I know there is
something to run from
or that begs to be witnessed.
I can’t tell if she
wants me to hide.
Or to seek.
Melissa Cannon lives and writes in Nashville. She has had careers in academia and in fast-food. Her poems have been published in many small-press journals and anthologies, including Bitter Oleander, The Closed Eye Open, Indefinite Space, Sinister Wisdom and Slant. Her chapbook Sister Fly Goes To Market was published in 1980 by Truedog Press and in 2019 she won the inaugural Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry.