Robyn Campbell

HOMESICKNESS

All day the sky sagged
onto the grass. So I
rode out on the train—an old use
of movement to replace thought.

I sleep late, wake
dry-skinned in the small
room I've outgrown, shades

drawn against the snow.
In the winter we lose
our minds, hollow

out and howl,
feel the threat coming
from inside the house, shapeless
and tyrannical as the wind.

We become inarticulate. We
go back godless to the cracks
between rock; the hard crystal
only petrified water. Here

is our annual undoing.

Let the sun be enough,
brief gasps of wild

light I can hoard inside
my chest. Let a salt circle be
drawn in the dirt. Let a wheel

turn somewhere. Hurry, let
the fever break.

Robyn Campbell currently lives in Philadelphia. She self-publishes a literary zine called Semiperfect, in which all the pieces are 100 words or less. She's the Nonfiction Editor at Weave Magazine and her work has appeared in Prairie Wolf Press Review, SLEET Magazine, and Apiary, among other places. She wants you to know that she, truly, is a Pisces.