Chet'la Sebree

North & South Twin Lakes

You haven’t washed
your underwear,
!200!You want to preserve
!200!the wilderness    
the ones you wore
the last time
!200!of uncured emotion,
!200!remember everything
you were with him,
you’ve smelled them
!200!as it was—so you don’t
!200!remove splinters.
each morning—
your excitement,
!200!You thumb bruises and
!200!split the seams of wounds
his vestigial—
since you slid them on,
!200!so that back on your coast
!200!you still have to ask
left the lake, the state,
his side of the country.
!200!about what you already know.

Chet'la Sebree was the 2014-2016 Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University's Stadler Center for Poetry. She is a graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing Program and has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, and The Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Crazyhorse, and BOAAT.