Salt by Cecilia Wright

Though it is ill-advised, she looks back. How can she not? She looks back and sees the place of her life and her inside of it. Her and her brother rescuing the worms after rain. Moon shining in her dark wet hair, head leaning out the window, smelling the rosemary, smiling, saying goodnight. The spot on the road where she is making her mother laugh and bare crooked teeth. Beneath the milkweed where she is burying a key she will remember once it is thick with orange.

Any other place, she realizes, will not be a place where she already is. Any other place will not be a place where she can find herselves and love them. Any other place will be a place where she is only one thing. Her heart breaks her into many pieces.

I will never leave anything behind, each grain of herself thinks or maybe promises. The wind moves through her.

Cecilia Wright is a writer in New York, currently pursuing a Masters in American Studies at Columbia.