by Jennifer Rodrigues
Afterlife
How some tadpoles will stay tadpoles
for years
How you must keep your hands wet to handle
frogs
How you mustn’t abrade the antibiotics
on their skin
How
there’s something about this inside-outness
An immune system that clings to the contours
of its body
How perhaps the shadows on the field
cast clouds up to the sun
How amphibians that might exist are in a process
of becoming
at their own pace
How we must move gently through this place
How perhaps everything we touch, every
word
is a skin-side stitch in some lightweight fabric
A garment
being fashioned
which when reversed
is as like today as a frog is like
its babies
Sarah B. Cahalan (she/her) writes about natural history, hope/grief/faith, the layers of landscapes and how those correspond with our own layers as people moving through time and place. She has poems, current or forthcoming, in Echtrai, EcoTheo, Stirring, and others. Sarah is from Massachusetts and is currently based in Dayton, Ohio (USA). twitter: @stampedinblind bluesky: @sarahbc.
Jennifer Rodrigues currently lives on the sacred Powhatan land of Fairfax, VA. She is trained as a certified yoga therapist & trauma informed yoga teacher, is a queer military spouse, mom, & neurodivergent superhuman. She has been featured in many lovely literary journals & anthologies, & has been nominated for Best of the Net with her photography. Find her on Insta @gmoneyfunklove.