"Corpus Christi"

By Matt Smythe

I wake to the wilderness in her eyes and a futile wish for cool air from the ceiling fan. Morning coffee and a cigarette on the porch. Shafts of sun and smoke tendrils. The coffee still too hot to sip. Unhurried, our talk is hushed and spare.

She mourns the death of the local dive bar. Its small-town heyday of loud townies anchored till 2am, drunk fists pounding on the bar. 3rd shift patrons with 8am bottles of Bud. It’s the simple loss that hurts the most.

Sundress and bare feet in the passenger seat. Her hair dancing. She plays with the win out her window. Rearview mirror a greening season in bright retreat. Nothing but wide-open. Tires humming their miles-song.

Her echo won’t let me go. I wake alone under the stars with home a thousand miles away. Shoulders of gravel and ground tires. Wilderness. I’m told Corpus Christi means the body of Christ. Maybe there I’ll say the hardest of things I have to say.

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Matt Smythe hails from the Finger Lakes region of western New York. An Army veteran and lifelong outdoorsman, Matt suffers from an inability to sit still. If he’s not in the woods, or on the water, he’s scheming ways to get there. His work has appeared in Free Range American, Gray’s Sporting Journal, the Fly Fish Journal, The Drake, Southern Culture on the Fly, Revive, Midcurrent, TROUT Magazine, and a handful of other non-outdoors-related magazines and literary journals. He recently published a book of poetry with Dead Reckoning Collective titled Revision of a Man, where this poem first appeared.

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