KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Heather M. Browne
Little Boxes
I make my own box
With thick black lines
Straight and sharp
Permanent
This box that will never change
I’m no longer allowed to say I am married
By law
Refusing to own single
By love
Separated
That feels close
I make my own
Box
To contain myself
Within these fours lines
It’s quite simple really
I use a Sharpie
In black ink
Which really isn’t a color
But the absorption of all the rest
And total absence
Of light
I do not mark an x nor a check
I fill in that damn box completely
So there can be no doubt
I am and will always be
Widowed
A Scent of Gardenia
Gardenias in her braid scented
Their first spring date and night,
As she walked shyly
Toward him smiling.
Auburn curls danced
Round her head.
Soft creamy petals
Waiting
To be plucked.
She carefully freed one,
Letting it dangle.
And kissing its gentle ivory lips, tucked
It tenderly, into his rugged hand, waiting
‘Tween calluses, raised.
The ridges of mountains,
Old.
And giggled, daintily,
A babbling brook.
Gardenias in her summer bouquet scented
Their wedding day, sweet.
Dropping them carefully down the candled aisle,
Her heels clicking,
I do.
She took his side, his hand,
His name.
Gardenias and babies in their yard grew.
Autumn is the time for plenty.
Season to season,
Tea parties and proms.
Ironed and pressed for safe-keeping.
Gardenias in their lives withered.
Arthritis and heart attacks.
Her walker legs scraping,
Slowly down the wintry aisle,
Dropping petals
Into his hand once more.
To rest
And scent
Him home.
Wedding Sheets Ring
She slips silently between cold cotton sheets
Yellowed forms highlighting permanent space
She gets lost in between
Sliding slowly into her soundless bed
Guilt scratching her, already
Cooling thighs
Mediocre thread count
There are no moans here
Just itch
She tries not to think
To enter undisturbed
So unlike earlier tonight
Returning, to saggy breath, stolen air
These cold yellowed sheets, stained with wait, with forgotten want
A wedding gift, broken in that first night
Elastic stretch grabbed and pulled in hungry rustlings
Now all she needs is flat
Heather M. Browne is a faith-based psychotherapist and recently emerged poet, published in the Orange Room, Boston Literary Review, Page & Spine, Eunoia Review, Poetry Quarterly, The Poetry Bus, Red Fez, The Muse, An International Journal of Poetry, Deep Water Literary Journal, Electric Windmill, Maelstrom, mad swirl, and Dual Coast. Her first chapbook, We Look for Magic and Feed the Hungry has just been published by MCI. She just won the Nantucket Poetry Competition and will be featured on their website. She has been married 20 years to her love, has 2 amazing teens, and can be found frolicking in the waves. Follow her: www.thehealedheart.net