I cannot collect the remnants
from your brain’s tangles
Your gray matters
have split our connections
My hands quiver with the
forget-me-nots you always cherished
I caress your cheek with petals
as your blue eyes search for me
Mother, grief is the blade
cutting me out of you
Sallie Crotty has published many places, including The Dairy Hollow Echo; The Drabble; eMerge; and Resources to Recover. The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow awarded her a residency in 2018. Sallie holds a B.A. in English from Sewanee: The University of the South, an Ed.M. from Harvard, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She is working on a poetry collection, and her memoir Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope was published in 2022.
