Your wings spread
on Alki Beach next to Puget Sound.
You are wearing red mittens
and the snow glitters near your pink ears.
Your hair like poured butterscotch radiates
bright stripes of the morning’s sun.
You giggle, “Look at me!
I’m a snow angel!”
and I recall what the nurse
said just four years ago,
“Your baby, your beautiful baby,
hair like an Irish child.”
and how I wrapped my arms around you
whispering in your ear,
You are mine, stay with me.
Sallie Crotty has published many places, including The Dairy Hollow Echo; The Drabble; eMerge; and Resources to Recover. The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow awarded her a residency in 2018. Sallie holds a B.A. in English from Sewanee: The University of the South, an Ed.M. from Harvard, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She is working on a poetry collection, and her memoir Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope was published in 2022.
