Anwen

By Holly Day

 

When I was little, my mother would point out
circular patterns of mushrooms growing in the yard
tell me they were fairy rings, to be careful
not to step in them
or the fairies would take me away.

When she wasn’t looking, I would step into the circles
sometimes sit or lie in there for hours
waiting for fairies that never came.

 

This was the birth of my skepticism.
Me, ten years old
aimlessly picking at four-leafed clovers
with just one wish in my heart:
to leave.

 

Holly Day is a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).