by Ceridwen Hall
an old woman reads a story to a little girl; time is the cat sleeping in their laps or half-awake, purring and shedding because poems arrest time or catch time napping, the girl is not growing restless nor the grandmother tired time has heard this story before, often enough to know how it ends and begins, but the details in the middle change a little with each telling, like the rain falling outside and then ceasing, like the patterns in time’s fur happily ever after the grandmother will say and forget the girl will repeat and forget and remember many years later how time followed them downstairs and around the yard in a wide circle
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Ceridwen Hall is a poet, essayist, and educator from Ohio. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is the author of two chapbooks: Automotive (Finishing Line Press), fields drawn from subtle arrows (Co-winner of the 2022 Midwest Chapbook Award). Her full-length collection, Acoustic Shadows, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, Craft, Poet Lore, and other journals. You can find her at www.ceridwenhall.com.