Poem for First Loves
Demi Richardson
A blind dog wandered onto your property.
You tried to coax him inside, leaving a trail of bacon
from your own breakfast – but he never followed you in.
That summer, we smoked our first cigarettes.
That summer, your mother left the kettle screaming
on the stove.
We found duck eggs – speckled and blue – in your grandfather’s barn
before the fox made a mess of them…
And in August you said,
“I want to forget
all of this.” I mourned
the eggs. Wondered about your mother:
where she had run off to,
and if she was safe.
That was the summer of
stacking rain boots in the hall,
drinking sweet tea in the stretch of grass
between your home and mine.
Demi Richardson studied writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming with Broken Tooth Press, The Adirondack Review, and The Fem, among others.