Contributor: Cynthia B Pitman

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A trampled scrap of paper
scoots with the wind across the dry dirt road.
On it are written someone’s last words.
They cannot be read.
The lines of the hand-scrawled letters
bend in the folds of the crushed paper,
mangling the words. To catch the paper,
smooth it flat, straighten the lines
and read the words is no more possible
than it would be to find the writer,
soothe her pain, and reshape her future
that is already past.
But the words are there.
No one need read them for them to be there.


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I am a retired English teacher. I began writing again after 30 years of teaching. My poetry collection, The White Room, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.