By Candice M. Kelsey

and I choose not to brush my wet hair,

allowing it to tussle into Margaret Fuller’s

clematis wreath woven on the banks

of the Concord, mid-German translations.

A sudden quiet like loose tendrils

from my front porch view of our Little Tree,

whose stretch of limbs boast his growth.

Tilting right, one branch askew with sass

like adolescent hands-on-hip bark:

“What did you expect me to do, you who

planted then abandoned, coming home June

and July banking on no change but a crisp edge

in the breeze?” This oak too greets my return

with hard church pews of time and distance.

A pace I cannot keep but do. Months older,

my children a riot of cabbage and ferns. Fuller

knew “the only object in life was to grow.”

Moisture disrupts the bonds of hair. Is this where

I’m not enough, where mothers working

months from home sink into river mud? Meet

the frizz of distance. But Fuller too was

underestimated. I unfurl a blanket to picnic

with cabbage, ferns. Pin my hair to an imaginary

bonnet, let humidity take its course.

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in Los Angeles and Georgia. Often anchored in the seemingly quotidian, her work explores the intersections of place, body, and belonging; she has been featured in SWWIM, The Laurel Review, Poet Lore, Passengers Journal, and About Place among others. Candice reads for The Los Angeles Review, and her comfort-character is Jessica Fletcher. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.