dusty walk up prince street tails flick behind the backs of teddy soft cattle where the egrets feast on the insects crawling from the hoof smears in the earth that holds is held by roots overlapping caressing lovers’ hands whose initials claim the trees crickets chirp forest hums orange light peeps from a blue shadowed peeling paint farmhouse in this memory there is not one line to draw it bleeds through every place of unbelonging home is this feeling i wonder if the glow sunsong squint through it deepest breath ever makes you feel lovely enough to walk through a spider’s web and let it hug you like a mother eurydice who died off stage is not the same eurydice whose silent footsteps condemned her back to hell if my father is buried someplace i don’t know where he is becoming the earth three surnames delineate my siblings and none of us would tell you there’s more in a name than in the unspoken ever-presence of our mother

Courtney Buder (she/they) is a writer and visual artist living in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on unsurrendered and unceded Wolastoqey land. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Geist, Arc, Room, Queen’s Quarterly, and elsewhere. Find her online at courtneybuder.ca or on Instagram @courtneybuder.