by Robin Gow

Along Route 29

I have seen a dead self standing on the side of the road
looking for a ride home. I keep going.

There was a moment when this farm was vacated.
When a body grabbed all her bones and disappeared.

Then the ghosts came. The thing about death is that
it is not a lost key. First, the bugs and then the birds.

Fingers of ferns and other foliage. Cracked teeth
and peeling flesh. The building becoming a new refuge.

What happens to her now? Does wait or does she take her teeth
in a plastic bag down to the creek to wash them?

I have returned to my body to find all kinds of animals.
The foxes who play with tops and the deer who

collect anything they can find that is the color red.
What would happen if I took her home? Told her

to sit in the back seat. Used the rear view mirror to glimpse her.
We could pull over and go inside. We could put on

our vole faces and burrow into the house’s guts.
The red roof is peeling apart. My head is sliced into quarters.

I wonder if people take pictures when they pass her. If those
still look like me or if they just seen an old farm house.

Robin Gow is a trans poet and witch from rural Pennsylvania. It is the author of several poetry books, an essay collection, YA, and Middle-Grade novels in verse, including Dear Mothman and A Million Quiet Revolutions. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, and New Delta Review. Fae lives in Allentown Pennsylvania with their queer family.