Jill Kitchen
Hope’s Return
She is an arrow, bent and worn,
buried for years beneath soot
and stone, forgetting where
and whether to aim. Hesitation
shakes my hand: I do not recognize her.
I have been hunted unarmed for so long
that my skin has become a fleshy armor
thick with doubt and distrust.
But the moon whispers to me, smiling.
Fear and flames surround me, heat shimmer blur
above skyline. I swallow hard and reach for the arrow,
her feathered fletching. A brightening of memory
shudders through me, from a time without language.
I take in her form, turning her slowly,
measuring her weight. My hands straighten
her bruised spine, wipe away dark
clumps of dirt and sharpen her blade.
I fashion a bow from November’s dusk and take aim.
—Submitted on 11/23/2020
Jill Kitchen‘s work is forthcoming in Naugatuck River Review, where she was a finalist in the 12th Annual Narrative Poetry contest. She holds a BA from Colorado College with a major in Romance languages and lives in Boulder, Colo.
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