Jess Smith

Retreat

I had a lover in
the woods, his body
slight and shaking. 

We dipped ourselves
like fingers into cold
streams and emerged

with something to
taste. One night I bled
all over his sheets but 

in the moonlight, through
the window, the red
looked like a map, not 

a mistake. The sheets
seemed the deviance,
the glass and wood separating 

us from the night the
unnatural – not the air, not
the stream, not the blood. 

In daylight we sought
no linen to cover the green
burnt into my back, no 

knitted summer shawl
to wrap the wet at
our knees, just 

his tentative hands
turning certain, the same
way the moon’s 

pale silhouette in late
afternoon reminds us
what will shine in full dark.

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Jess Smith is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice at Texas Tech University. Her work can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, The Rumpus and other journals. She is the recipient of support from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center.