By Elizabeth Levinson

We were a summer of water,

flashing silver fish,

what minnow was a shiner,

a dace,

a chub,

a larval salmon

along the shoreline,

we were loose limbed

in the waves,

on the sandbar,

knees planted

on shifting ground,

we were sun bruised cheeks

and love bruised thighs,

we were read eyes, redeyes.

We were love slick

and love sick and soon,

before we knew it,

summer was over and

we were washed up,

bleached white and

picked clean,

bones cold to touch

in the autumn air

bones soon to be spread

by the icy tides

and winter hungers.

Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a high school teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. The author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), her first full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, will be published in the summer of 2023 (Unsolicited Press).