Rowan Tate
It is not always simple to hold the child
even if it leans against you
without fear or need
it does so wholly
and seems to ignore
the distance you carry.
It does not ask what you lost
to become this careful,
only climbs deeper
into whatever small thing
keeps unlacing itself
inside your hands
as if it were shelter
not wound.
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Image by Helena Lopes from Pexels
Rowan Tate is a Romanian creative and curator of beauty. Her writing appears in The Stinging Fly, The Shore, Josephine Quarterly, and Meniscus Literary Journal, among others. She reads nonfiction nature books, the backs of shampoo bottles, and sometimes minds.
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