Locked Away
Between her hospital room and home, there are miles / of darkness she must learn / to make light. She must understand again / this is not she. She is locked away in some distant cell / in some faraway prison in some remote city / she doesn’t know the name of, let alone / the directions to. All she knows is Please / take away this thing I’ve become. This body turned / hollow when all I’ve wanted is to give it purpose, / to have it give life, to make it / holy times three.
Michael Levan has work in recent or forthcoming issues of Waccamaw, Painted Bride Quarterly, Arts & Letters, Iron Horse Literary Review, Copper Nickel, and Hunger Mountain. He is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Saint Francis and edits and writes reviews for American Microreviews and Interviews. He lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his wife, Molly, and children, Atticus, Dahlia, and Odette.