Betty Stanton

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What We Lose

I

In the ditch where we burn trash, glass sinks
into the mud, teeth returning to the jaw. The wind
drags what is left of a curtain across gravel, soft
as breath against old wounds. Even the crows
won’t land here, the silence caging their calls.

II

Waist deep in the river, my aunt washes the names
from love letters, lets them go into the dark of the
current. Her hair clings like drowned memory, ink
turning the lines of her palms a darker blue, veins
of letters spreading down her forearms. Every page
lifts, shivers, and sinks into the slow wet silt.

III

A new flower blooms, white and blind, in the frost
between our breath. Our heartbeats hang open,
mouths learning how to speak our hunger.

IV

We kneel in the overgrown yard threading rusted nails
into necklaces, wrapping twine around the threat of
tetanus. The grass parts around her like a crowd
moving through a street, a parade blocked by the
memory of fire. Her shadow flickers, thins. We
try on a blanket of absence. Decide it fits our shoulders.

V

My body refuses to learn forgetting. It gathers
the broken, the frostbitten, presses them into the
hollow of my ribs. Into the small, unruined spaces
inside my chest. Into the pulse that survives those
moments where the light shatters bone to ash.

Betty Stanton (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer who lives and teaches in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received her MFA from the University of Texas – El Paso and also holds a doctorate in educational leadership. She is currently on the editorial board of Ivo Review. @fadingbetty.bsky.social