Do you want to? you ask.

Do you want to? you ask, pointing to the pine high on the embankment. You who never reaches for my hand, who gives me a little push away when I hug a few seconds too long.

UNDER THE PINE BY DESMA SHEERER 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 124

We run along the dirt road

dropping into a cleft between the mountains,

past the historical sign of a long-shuttered mine,

our feet falling on the hard-packed gray dirt,

(yours light as butterflies, mine elephants)

and our rhythmic two-beat breaths

(mine a steam engine, yours a whisper).

Do you want to? you ask,

pointing to the pine high on the embankment.

You who never reaches for my hand,

who gives me a little push away

when I hug a few seconds too long,

who hasn’t kissed me 

like you mean it in how long–

I nod because I understand and I am willing to try.

Between rough roots all I can see is your face

pine-needled branches, and scraps of sky.

DESMA SHEERER

The places in which I’ve lived get muddled in my mind, and I have a tendency to get lost while driving because some landmark reminds me of Phoenix or Blacksburg or Flagstaff or Florence and I make a wrong turn. In all the places I’ve been a writer but only since settling down in Upstate New York, the area of my childhood, have I dedicated myself fully to it. My poems and short stories have been published in DASH, Adanna, and The Woven Tale. Mostly I work as a health care administrator, but I also freelance as a copy editor. All day every day, I am a mom to two spectacular teenage girls and wife to a man who builds me planters for the garden and space in which to write.