Leave It Behind

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by Emily Raabe


  although her shoulder muscles

  strain to twist. She has to just

  believe her sister follows her, wants

  to come up from that soft place, wants

  to feed her in her stupid grief

  for things that have not yet

  even come. She could fill

  a room with that grief and still

  have plenty left.

  In this, she is alone.

  The Mirror

  In the bathroom before bed

  they make moles with a magic marker,

  one on each side of her mouth,

  like hers,

  and put the extra pair of glasses

  on her.

  Finally

  standing quiet in the mirror

  are the twins,

  their secret visible,

  just touching in the glass.

  This is what

  they have been waiting for:

  not a reflection

  but her,

  a perfect likeness.

  They want this.

  This

  is what I want.

  Acknowledgments

  “Fox Paws,” “Self-portrait as a House,” FutureCycle Poetry, 2011

  “An Old Story,” Indiana Review, Fall 2008

  “The House in the Meadow,” Big Ugly Review, Fall 2008

  “Babysitting,” “The Game,” “Route 7,” “Turning Back,” Chelsea, 80, June 2006

  “My Best Dream,” Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Spring 2006

  “Darwin in the Andes,” The Alaska Quarterly Review, Fall 2005

  “Spring, El Portal,” Gulf Coast, Spring 2005

  “Milestone,” The Crab Orchard Review, Winter 2005

  “Rain is Black and White, Like a Photograph,” The Antioch Review, Fall 2004

  “Love Poem,” Agni Online, May 2004

  “Driving Without Headlights,” The Brooklyn Review, No. 16, 1999

  Leave It Behind came in second place in the judging for the 2011 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, FutureCycle Press.

  ***

  The author would like to thank the Ragdale Foundation and the MacDowell Colony for the gift of time to write. Thanks also to her trusted readers—Randall Potts, Ramsay Breslin, Alison DeLauer, and Alison Powell—and her family for their unending support.

  About FutureCycle Press

  We are a non-profit independent publisher dedicated to preserving for posterity the work of some of the best poets and flash fiction authors writing today. Our books, chapbooks, and anthologies are sold globally in print-on-demand and digital (“ebook”) formats on Amazon, through multiple distributors and resellers, and from our web site. We offer weekly and monthly giveaways of our books and Kindle editions, plus free PDFs are always available on our Archives and Good Works tabs.

  The FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize has been awarded since 2009 for the best full-length volume of poetry published by our press. In 2013, we introduced the Good Works projects, issue-oriented anthologies designed to increase awareness and help make our world a better place. All proceeds from Good Works paperback and Kindle editions are donated to related charitable causes.

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