Gyroscope Review 16-2 | Page 20

STILL TALKING ABOUT ENDINGS by Kelli Allen Tell me how to roll-up and flee. When I touch your wrist with three fingers and am checking not for pulse but for birds, lilies, trapped, both in their unfurling, under your skin, maybe mine, tell me how to instead ache on my own. Tonight you fill your mouth with pebbles collected from our river’s narrow bank and this, too, is refusal to listen. How can you hear the stories I surrender with mica between your tooth and jaw? Once there were two of us. And now the briny pears are blossoming and every walk I take without you is a reminder that we left what matters spilt over silk sheets we spread together to mark this and ours. Gyroscope Review - page 10 !