how to edit a world someone else created

for MW

A great blue heron pumps its broad wings
against the empty blue, seeking west
alone,

as I crumble into holes pieces of our black
and white photos I’ve first halved with a snap of shears,
saving

only the images of myself severed from him,
before I gentle lilies of the valley
among

the roots of the ashes, trusting
in shade to resurrect white bells in
spring.

back to issue

A graduate of Middlebury College, Elaine Wilburt received a 2019 Creatrix Haiku Award and lives in Maryland with her husband, five children, mother and one spoiled dog. Her fiction and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cresset, Little Patuxent Review, Broad River Review, Heart of Flesh and Ekphrastic Review, among others.