By: April Salzano

it didn’t make any of the sounds I had
expected. No wailing howl, no shrill scream,
not even a broken sob that lasted into that first
night alone. No angry hyperventilating
choke, no empty gurgle of loss,
no slight giggle of freedom. It just lay itself down
in the hallway outside our bedroom
door, inside the house we never meant
to keep, in the town where we landed
and somehow sprouted roots,
and simply ceased to exist.

******

[April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She recently finished her first collection of poetry, for which she is seeking a publisher and is working on a memoir on raising a child with autism. Her work has appeared in journals such as Poetry Salzburg, Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Montucky Review, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press. ]