
To Continue
by Rachel Hill
a banana blackened on the kitchen counter.
cherries decayed in the fridge
and bruised in the passenger seat of my car,
pruned by the prowling sun that broke through the windows.
I crushed the cherries between my fingers,
their gritty yellow skin hiding beneath my nails
as the pits slipped out of their meat.
the sympathy lilies dried and fell to the counter
and the stems fermented in the vases.
it’s a miracle I kept the geraniums alive.
their eight pink heads were only two
the day before the news,
two days before I spent most hours behind a steering wheel
staring at roads too dry and skies too cloudless,
every song lyric an elegy, the passenger seat nesting
garbage: mucus, dead plants, and immortal plastic bags.
Rachel Hill is a lifelong Washingtonian living in Auburn, Washington. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington, and she has edited for Poetry Northwest Editions and the Seattle Review. Her poetry is forthcoming in WHEN FLOWERS SING: A Poetry Anthology.