Summer Smith

when witchcraft was innocent

plucking spring’s onion grass, dried earth
worms stuck to sidewalk. when i was little,
i’d chalk in ant colonies and curl pill bugs
in my dirt palms. for dinner, we would make

maggot soup crushed by twig, rainwater elixir,
decayed rose petals. when i was little, the world
was my cauldron— laundry steam seeping out
the side of my house, into the poison ivy. i would

scrape every knee capping memory off of the road;
life hoarded into the mud puddles or back into dunes.
dandelion, butter cup, my yellowed then browned then
whitened skin—when i was little, it didn’t mean a thing.

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Summer Smith lives and attends school in Salisbury, MD. They currently study creative writing with a focus on poetry and nonfiction at Salisbury University. Smith is originally from Baltimore and studied literary arts at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts.