I always imagined I would be there when you went away.
I’d scream.
Hysteria and disbelief commingling in wails,
while my weakened fingers held onto the last corner
of my long ago childhood,
that tiny tattered corner I’d held, and smoothed, and worried
thin as the wing of a dragonfly.
But when I got to your side,
there was only silence
as the unravelling edge slipped from my grasp,
floating away
with less than the sound of a breath.
June Locco is a writer and English professor in Baltimore, Maryland. She enjoys reading, gardening, escaping to New England, and finding ways to understand and define the world through craft. @Abbygoldgirl