Belly

Lauren Goodwin Slaughter

I’m tired, she says. We’re sleeping, he says.

Who knew a beginning could be totally quiet.

Leaf-light, footprints, a strand of hair blowing past them.

Uneven bells, the traveling.

Mushrooms pushing from this earth.

Art by Evie Lovett

Lauren Goodwin Slaughter is recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and author of the poetry collection, A LESSON IN SMALLNESS (National Poetry Review Press, 2015), which was a finalist for the Rousseau Prize for Literature and the Eric Hoffer Award in poetry.