Sara Long

Sara Long writes nonfiction for Common Era’s The Common Cause Journal and poetry for the hell of it. She studied English and Classics at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and currently resides in Kansas City, MO. Sara has had poems published or forthcoming by the Stonecoast Review, Maudlin House, and Night Picnic. Find her on Instagram @moon.reunion.

A Man Named River

My favorite place to cry is the shower.
Hair like black seaweed
splayed across hazy jade tile,
an opaque green ocean,
my own Puget Sound,
packed up and carried away with me
and the rest of our things
from the house in Seattle.
The drain’s been clogged
since before I moved in.
In here, no one tells me
it’s time for moving on,
it’s been more than a year,
I think you’re regressing,
the water’s too high.

I dream of melting into saltwater
drenching strange, humid country
Missouri, I hear or say,
shrinking under the gaze of the woman at CVS
when she asks where to send my prescription,
my voice, a harmonica,
melancholic, the
note trailing off.
Unbearable sky
above great columns of rain,
that scoffing god of fresh water
hooks my salt soul.
I thought I might meet you again
in the river.
Instead I found stillness
on pale green stones
at the bottom of the bathtub.