When it is dark out,
The sky closes itself like a window.

I watch them
Drink from the same empty stream.

There will always be
Smoke in the trees.

We left fields and orchards untended.
They withered as we slept.

The birds will be dead by
Spring. I will crawl

Unhurt over their bodies,
Only to sit alone

In the kitchen, listening to
The radio in the dark.

At dusk I stopped by that
House by the lake

To taste her lips on my lips,
And the dead boys’ voices

Swept up like mist in my head,
Lost in fog.

Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including The Lake, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Pacific, Interpreters House and Jet Fuel Review. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, ‘Sunday School’ was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.