Home migrates, a nest cobbled from banitsa, books, and piles
Of autumn leaves. Now it’s gone again—I don’t know where.

These nighttime miles tick a requiem for every hitchhiking ghost.
My passengers were me once; I can’t strand them in Nowhere.

Winter silvers strands of my hair, summer dyes my skin dark.
Leased by the seasons, I’m always moving somewhere.

The cage of my body hurtles along its looped track. Upside down,
My spirit says you have to choose. Why can’t I choose everywhere?

Part grass and part river, you are a swamp. Snakes and crocodiles live in you.
Sarah, you are both and neither; amphibians don’t belong anywhere.

 

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Sarah Abbott received her MFA in fiction from the University of Kentucky. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Devil's Lake, The Citron Review, and the Rappahannock Review, among others. She loves traveling and coming home.