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Volume 11 • Number 1 • Spring-Summer 2019

Micki Blenkush

Age 10

At one thirty in the morning I remember 
her tooth then creep on bare feet 
to fish that small pearl.

Three teeth in two months.  If she knows 
there is no fairy, she keeps it to herself.   

She does her homework in far rooms.  
Beneath her desk or curled inside 
her cardboard house.  

She says she doesn’t like to be watched.  
Always, I have been the owl 
above her branches.  

Today she wakes stirred 
with mermaid waves left by braids 
in damp, overnight hair,

unconcerned with cash left beneath 
her tooth-empty glass.

After she asks for help to twist her locks 
into a barrette and clasp a locket 
around her neck, I recognize 

but pretend not to see 
how she looks into the mirror 
held beneath her eyes: 

lashes, framed curls, 
the angled fox of her chin.  

Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud, MN and works as a social worker. She was selected as a 2017-2018 fellow in poetry for the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program and was a 2015 recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant awarded by the Central MN Arts Board. Her writing has recently appeared in: Gyroscope Review, Gravel, Midway Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Typishly, and Crab Creek Review. More can be found here: mickiblenkush.com.