The Missing Woman by Heather Sager

In the barnyard grass out back
from her house,
we found her mud boots standing,
open, waiting
for tender feet
to slip into them.

As my friend and I walked,
the field of crows
sounded-out our thrumming recollection
of the woman and her husband—
his rages toward her—
the shouts we heard, the whole
town heard, down the street
that one night.

I called to memory
an afternoon when we met,
her quick-heart, her chapel-mind.
The flash of her brown eyes
darting.

In the afternoon, under cirrus-twined sky,
country spires supplicated
and smoke
tended to the ether.

In the barnyard grass out back,
we found her mud boots standing.



Heather Sager lives in Illinois. Her most recent poetry appears in Fahmidan Journal, Magma Poetry, Version (9) Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Red Wolf, Trouvaille Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and more. Recent fiction appears in The Fabulist and elsewhere.