Measurements
- Measurements
I wanted to measure your sickness in inches, stretched out arms, fingers tip to tip. Each knuckle, a month. Three years gone, five capped by snow, your trip to Utah: Green River, Desolation Canyon. This time last January, there was only the lice scare, the pumpkin bread. You retelling when we rode out the tornado of ’96 in the back of the red jeep.
Quiet, I waited for Matt from the cremation place. When he arrived, I stared at the burn on his forearm. Asked about the pineapple tattoo on his neck. He took your body away, so now, this separateness. My hair still growing, inch after inch. Your empty trailer sinking, the right side faster, into the earth. That faulty foundation. I keep note of the space, so meticulous. Perfect, straight rows. Wheat cresting. Knee-high feed corn we will not eat. [End Page 118]
Julie Henson was the winner of the 2016 Driftless Prize in Poetry as well as the Beacon Street 2015 Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry, Iowa Review, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Quarterly West, CutBank, Southern Indiana Review, and others.
