Bright morning, a trail
of snail shimmer loops
the sidewalk. So much
to follow, kind of cursive
underlying these first
steps. Letters I haven’t
sent. There are times
the words I trace across
a page are just adhesion,
sticking to a point against
resistance. Other times,
propulsion, slicking a
frictionless way forward,
swifter for another to
follow. I want to give you
this unexpected silver,
a record of the body’s
sugar I hold out to you
without any sort of shell.
Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people's dogs. She has some poems in chapbooks—Whisper Song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Features, 2023)—and journals, including Steel Jackdaw, Gargoyle, and Humana Obscura. She lives in Frostburg, MD.