“what the sand remembers” by Isabella Crow

beach miles and big water.

how many things the lake has seen, how many things i’ve seen with the lake.

meteor showers and smoke and first drunk and words not even the sand will forget.

still, the dunes shift with the seasons.

there is never a going-back. there is no place where it happened.

maybe that’s why when he ran his hand

down my back and crushed me into an incident report

I poured it all out of me right away,

dampening the dust with please believe me

the sweat is still wet on my back

before the wind blows it into the waves, before the waves wash it into the lake,

before the lake is orange with moonset,

I was a child here once, twice,

again and again. now dragged through time against my will.

I am a girl under the monkey moon. I am stoned. I am counting

shooting stars. I am scared and old

and trying to get home.

Isabella (“Baz”) Crow is a second-year economics student, artist, and writer. They are a Hopwood laureate, an editor of the Every Three Weekly, and a two-time Caldwell Award winner, whose work has been featured in Xylem Magazine, Writer-to-Writer, and the LSWA Literary Journal. They make art and coffee for Argus Farm Stop and do economic analysis for the Institute for Social Research.