wildscape. literary journal

deep shade
by Stacy Marie Miller

No one recalls where the good canopies are, whether
it’s more or less humid near the river, whether
it’s even running any more.

It seems we lost all the paperwork
on how to run this place. Whether
May was a myth, like heaven.

             Let’s get back in the car, sweetie -- this
             this is not the one I thought it was.

Son, I should have known. Or I knew, but
it was a knowing I had no place to keep.
All the things I promised were not

a lie, just truths no longer possible.
We are so far from the deep
shade I remember. Whether

we even saved the seeds.
Hairs glisten on your legs, the parking
lot melting beneath your shuffle, shoes

on the wrong feet, in the toddler style.
Everything about and in and of
you is still and always perfectly

impossible, a feather
made of birds, a leaf
made of trees.

about the author // Stacy Marie Miller