There Is No Other Side
by Stephanie McCarley Dugger

                                  Two large trees drop

their early pecans 

              against the roof.          It’s nearly 

       fall,         and the sound

reminds me of footsteps.

                                           This morning one fell,

rolled and rolled, and I,

                    forgetting the pecans,

    thought someone was in the attic.

                                                               Your ghost, perhaps.

First fear,           then joy,            then

                         a sigh of realization:

                              you are not coming back.

              How many times

      will I come to this?             Your antique

lamps, a pillow

                         made from your shirts,

       the photo I found when I moved

yet again—          you and I at our shared

      birthday party,        cakes

side-by-side, candles lit (16 & 44),

                            both of us taking in

               a breath just after

the wish,           just before

                 we extinguished

all that fire.                               You missed

             yours this year,     the first

       of the rest,                           which means

I want to skip mine               and

                         I want to celebrate,

cake ablaze,

                          more than ever—         a reminder

that soon enough,

              I won’t be here, either.

                                             I carry on,           each day’s

distance        growing

          both longer and shorter.

                                                            There is much

to do in the interim.      There is nothing

                       to do but wait.

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.