Poem by Lauren Hall 

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THE FOREST

If I am already lost, it won’t matter if I stop to sleep.

I will dream you above me, stretched like so many silver birches.

The trees here are too many to map.

This one makes wild apples.

They are small and green and pitted with sweet black.

I float them on the river and send them to you.

Some are lost to storms or raccoons.

The ones that find you are never eaten.

I am snake-rooted and still in the rain.

I let my boots fill with water.

I let my mouth fill with water.

The forest buries itself in my throat and waits there.

Asking me how to grow. 

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