Mary C Sims

Stasis

& I sat with faith’s face
in the warm dark. Some stories

keep us still: him, by the dock, outside
the walkway. That last winter

when he asked, Anything
ever really—all my devotion

& I couldn’t even make a new god.
At the station, in his coat,

I thought, True? Think it might—talking quiet
to lantern the whole climb home.

On the roof, I practice goodness
like a clock, like someone who gets to see him

alive again, & still, there’s no return
to return to. I once believed my life

like a boat. But you can be anything
in water.

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Mary C Sims is an MFA graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a former poetry editor for The Greensboro Review. Her work has appeared in The Shore, wildness, Josephine Quarterly, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Carolina Quarterly and more. Currently, she splits her time between working as an Assistant Editor, Journalist, Poetry Editor and Freelance Photographer when she is not, once again, traveling to visit her friends.