Childhood was a desert you couldn’t get across.  
The houses visited and the strangers there.  
The crawling hours. The empty windows  
you looked out of. There was nowhere  
to go and nothing to do. Nobody close.  
Just the half-self in its half-life, alone.  
Noise was a comfort, but scrawnier  
than winter, you said almost nothing.  
Tonight, you stood at the window and  
watched wild horses ride off into snow. 
It will take time to get used to this new  
life. To settle down. To spread your arms  
out with the things on the table. To look at 
the landscape and think: “It will need tending.” 

Lisa Low’s essays, book reviews, and interviews have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Review, The Tupelo Quarterly, and The Adroit Journal. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals, among them Valparaiso Poetry Review, Pennsylvania English, Phoebe, American Journal of Poetry, and Southern Indiana Review.