Layover

SARAH MENGEL

A main road in Denver
from a plane’s window:
constricted, dehydrated veins.
Some other soul’s regular route.
Colorado rock seems to breathe,

pulse from this high above. I feel like hovering
like branches of hemlocks in Pennsylvania.
I’m choosing to linger, antlers
through a morning fog
when the Delaware’s too low for a fire.

How ink curls, flicks
around the word “home.” My blood left
on northern maple leaves, spilled
in Oklahoma dirt
the color of October foliage I’ve slipped,
fallen on.

I’m straddling state lines where home
is fragile in my pocket. Where it beats
on the edge of my lips, desperate, unsure
like a secret.

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SARAH MENGEL (she/her) is a lesbian poet and scholar originally from eastern Pennsylvania. She earned her MA in English from West Chester University and is currently a PhD in English student at Oklahoma State University. She is an assistant editor with Small Harbor Publishing and reads with Exposition Review. Her work has been published with The Rumen, The Words Faire, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Her debut chapbook, Glittersmoke, was published in 2024 with Alien Buddha Press.