The Moon Checked In Under Your Name

By Layla Lenhardt

At the edge of the salt marsh
where the cattails whisper in ciphers
and the moon yawns wide,
I said your name three times into a jar
of rainwater and milk teeth.

The sky did not answer
but a sparrow stared at me too long
and the tide pulled back,
a breath held for centuries.

You are not a man, you are a season.
Somewhere between crow-call and frost.
My heart crawled out of its husk to follow you,
left a rib behind in the blackberry bramble.
It sings when I pass.

In the dream I keep having,
you light a candle in my throat
and laugh as the wax melts through my spine.
I wake up with your fingerprints
on the backs of my eyelids.

And somehow, the woods know. 
The wind knows.
Even the bones I buried beneath the elm
have begun to hum your name
like it’s a spell that costs
more than I have,
but I pay it anyway.

Layla Lenhardt is the author of Mother Tongue, Mainstreet Rag 2023. She has been published in Rust + Moth, Prairie Schooner, Pennsylvania Literary Journal and others. She has received her MFA from IU and is a gemologist and harpist.