To Sarah on the Shortest Day of the Year

Clouded sky, a huckleberry moon
hidden up there somewhere. It’s night

nearly all day. I think about you
and your pocketful of paper matches

gone damp in the rain. The convocation
of flares we left behind. My pocketful

of cigarette butts, my pocketful of ash.
How many hearts broken between us

and pasted back together with the sticky
remains of rum and chewing gum.

Once I thought your voice would save me.
I’m sorry for that. In the dark I walk

the labyrinth lined with pebbles
and seashells and smooth broken

bits of green bottles and remember
July’s light: campfire, a setting sun,

flashlight beams stravaging the trail,
waves shocked into bioluminescence,

each flame struck tender and vincible
and in a flash extinguished.

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Elizabeth Vignali is the author of three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019), and the forthcoming poetry collection, House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review.