Editor's Prize Winner | May 02, 2025

GIRLS’ DAY ELEGY 

It has nothing to do with you
that she shares your name,
my new friend, with whom
tomorrow I will hie off
to wine country. Neither of us drinks.
It bores her. & the way you went,
darling, I won’t touch the stuff.
I live in the state of California
beside a bush lit with hummingbirds
who drink as if these were the earth’s
last sugars. Everything tastes
different. I eat pineapple-
flavored edibles. I scent my rooms
with tonka & peppermint. My friend
& I take our girls’ day—without
her husband or kids, without
my solitudes. We climb nude
into a bath of chunky, slime-
slick clay. Side by side we shower,
dig out from our vaginas blood-like
clots of peat. Mineral heat
unlocks the wooden drawer
of our complaints. What we
give. What we take but
shouldn’t take. We talk
like girlfriends—I mean
the other kind. I loved you
terribly. Summer mornings breast
to breast in the icy sound.
I’d shiver to shore. You’d swim
alone, farther then farther so
perilous out. Can you see me
through the loose strumming
of the waves? I have left
the window open for you.
Do you know to find me?
She’s good company, good-humored,
real. Has a gift for listening,
for ease. From time to time
I get to say your living name.