Kathryn Merwin

One Night We Drove through Maryland

You couldn’t have survived long

away from the forest. I know.

Rain-thirsty, caught in the throat

of a sunflooded continent, slowly

unmothering your way to the shore.

We could have become the coast,

let the salt-rim of Atlantic swell

rush our skin into purple calcite.

Remember when it all

came together? Your bones,

my bones, a twisted map

of east and west,

like the seaboards running

into themselves,

forever & always

remaking each other.

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Kathryn Merwin is a writer currently based in Baltimore. Her work has appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Passages North, Hobart, The Journal, Sugar House, Prairie Schooner and Blackbird. She has read and/or reviewed for the Bellingham Review, WomenArts Quarterly and the Adroit Journal, and holds a MFA in poetry from Western Washington University. Her first collection, Womanskin, is available from CutBank Books. Connect with her at www.kathrynmerwin.com.