Sarah Norman

“The Quiet Girls"

Were we never wolves? No, we never were.
We never let ourselves be lured into a lair.
We never licked honey off an eyetooth

just for the sweet. We never swallowed
our own blood with the honey. We were
neither animal nor stone. We were ephemeral,

motes in light, breath in winter. Drifting
was safe travel; we knew it then, and we were right.
The earth slowed its spinning and we stayed on.

Trenches yawned, and we skirted them. We survived
the meteor shower—no fragments fell on us.
Still we float like spores, always aloft and away.”
― CATHERINE PIERCE