Three Summers                                                                                                  
WILDsound Writing Festival
https://festivalforpoetry.com/2024/09/24/grief-poem-three-summers-by-samantha-malay/


wind lifts a tarp from a half-wrecked car
floats cottonwood seeds to my neighbor’s pool
once host to dangling feet
beer bottle clink
and barbecue smoke

on a narrow stretch of the continent
birds flew from cactus nests
to an empty beach
I peeled a mango in the bathroom sink
slept to the sounds of a ceiling fan

in a dream I searched a road through the woods
for a dog that had jumped from the back of a truck
I saw the papery husk of a garter snake
my ankles snared in baling twine
parts of myself long extinct