The Fox
by Stephanie McCarley Dugger

I’m sorry about the frozen ground

                                               I say to the fox,

who has been scratching

              at it all morning,           looking for it to soften.             

                                        I think of you,                suffocating

         in the hospital bed, 

                                                 my repeated I’m so sorry. 

                         Your gasps: 

I just, 

I just,  

I just, 

                       until you were gone. 

                                                             I just wanted 

          to save you               

                                or let you go.                   Before 

          the very end,             when I held the roses close 

                       for you to see,              when you

          rubbed the petals 

between your finger and thumb,

                                                      you asked me 

                             to touch them, too,                       

to remember how fine it is 

                                                         to feel something tender.

Stephanie McCarley Dugger’s collection of poetry, Either Way You’re Done (2017), was published by Sundress Publications and their chapbook, Sterling (Paper Nautilus, 2015), was winner of the Vella Chapbook contest. Their essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Baltimore Review, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tampa Review, and other journals. They teach Creative Writing at Auburn University at Montgomery and also serve as Creative Nonfiction editor at Los Angeles Review and Thirteen Bridges Review.