Snow hardened over me.
It fell as I fell.
Quiet,
quiet morning
star shot
from a loud heaven.
My fists unclasped
from clouds,
a girl slipping,
her arms out,
sinking back.
Silent
as fertility, I fell.
To drop
from such a height
does not feel
like dropping at all.
Rising
is what it’s like.
For years
and years, I fell
and earth below
me swelled,
a blurred puddle.
Then I landed
like a smudge
of ink on a sheet
of blank paper.
A deer turned;
I saw a child
tug his red sled away.
I made my mark:
just a fog
of breath,
body print
exposed in snow.
I paid no notice
to the wrecked wing,
bone out, bruise,
white mold
of another
life matted to my hair.
I heard my voice,
A speaker in another
room,
and so I left
my dress, my pathetic
little halo
there in the snow,
and naked,
I ran,
naked, I
moved through.
Flight
Holli Carrell is a Pushcart-nominated writer currently writing and teaching in Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Her writing has appeared in 32 Poems, Salt Hill, Bennington Review, Quarterly West, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, and other places.