Embrace

By Kristin Trent

stinging bug bites remind me of that late summer night
crickets whistle along a trickling creek
while venom festers beneath scratched skin

the car door, click closed
we cruise a one-lane highway
hiding,  in word-silence

powdered parking lot pluming 
the earth’s rough stagnancy worn against rubber tires
steeps
an ancestral incense

I feel the ground
and the willow
the wood
and the shadows
encompassing

blackberry brambles stick to my tights
childish hands pulling
closer

sky-flashed enchanted fluorescents
draw warmth away from my heart
with the quiet dark’s embrace
the heat, dividing in riverstream channels
returning,
I am still

departing physically
cold and separate
leaf fragments scatter
to impart the cold restoration of my human heart

---

Kristin Trent

10/10/22

Kristin Trent is a fourth-year English major in the Creative Writing Honors program at UC Davis. She works as a staff writer for the campus news desk at The California Aggie although she also has been published in The Davis Vanguard and The Montecito Journal. She is currently working on a collection of poetry for her honors thesis.