I don’t know if this is the last night
but I do know it is the end of this day:
day hinged open in the valley of shadow,
day called switchback, called sunburn,
called altitude sickness. Day turned
on its side and sealed with the kiss
of consolation. Day of ascent. Day
of peppermint beneath my tongue.
Day of mud on the snowpack. Day
of drifting. Day of division—
of an end to solitude. Sister,
this day was mine. Amended, alight.
Hannah Kroonblawd lives in eastern Nebraska, where she teaches creative writing at Concordia University. She attended the MFA program in poetry at Oregon State University, and the PhD program in English Studies at Illinois State University. She is the author of the chapbook The Leafcutters, the Minor Saints (Press 254) and recent poems have appeared in Potomac Review, Soundings East, and Mid-American Review, among others.