Forgetting the Chapel, Sherry-Red

by Hannah Smith & Amanda Maret Scharf

---

Heavy velvet drapes close 
off the living room. A bright red sun 
sits patiently behind your hand, a city 
I am always leaving. 

Again and again, the itch 
of yesterday. When you call, 
I call back, shout stage directions 
for this production called grief.

Sugar crystals refract your light, 
stain the glass I hold in my desperate 
palm. The shrill sight of dust clings 
to the years caked across my shoulders,

the ones you built between the mantel 
and the final view of our skyline.

---

Hannah Smith (she/her) is a writer from Dallas, Texas. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the Ohio State University, where she is the Managing Editor of The Journal. She is a Best of the Net nominee, and her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Image, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere

Amanda Maret Scharf (she/her) is a poet from Los Angeles. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, The Iowa Review, Fugue, Sixth Finch, Willow Springs, Meridian, and elsewhere. Her work has been exhibited at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at MOCA under her artist collaboration, mixedgreens. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Ohio State University where she serves as poetry editor for The Journal.