Blue Mountain Arts Poetry Contest
disheartening epilogue to cold days
by Tessa Zeng
Eighth Contest
third Place
she's hanging up the sheets outside, little kid shorts
shirts and elusive socks
long underwear from a long winter
wearing nothing but a blue dress
melting her into the heat-filled sky
a wisteria-covered lawn
and a weeded dream
the porch is empty like remorse, sweat is dropping
between her shoulder blades
well, she's barely
twenty and holding it in
stringing up clothes on the line all the while
from a piled up basket of laundry
she sighs and unfolds the
short memories, a shorter romance, and
a white starched innocence shortest
of all