Beth Oast Williams

What Wood We’ve Become

I wake, my face afire
from sheet-burn, this cabin
room rank with the stench
of smoked ham. What parts 

of ourselves we slaughter
just trying to stay warm. What wood
we’ve become, unable to run.
Count the ways we convince 

ourselves, search under beds,
turn over or cough, whatever it is we do
mid-dream to reset the clock.
Remember that day at the beach 

the wave broke my toe, but you
kept swimming, the rest of us holding
our breath each time
your head went under. 

In the quiet of night
how loud the knock when
ice cubes drop like gun shots.
One of us melts, reshapes. 

Either I was with you again
or I am water, stretching
the truth
to fill the entire bowl.

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Beth Oast Williams is the author of the chapbook Riding Horses in the Harbor (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poetry has been accepted for publication in Nimrod, Salamander, Leon Literary Review, SWWIM, One Art, Dialogist, Invisible City and Rattle's Poets Respond, among others, and nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.