The Lake House – Jessamyn Rains

We drove a Jeep down the bumpy hill
to the lake where we swam in baggy shorts


and t-shirts, tangled up in stringy plants,
covered with seeds and pods.


It rained as we slept in the lake house,
tucked inside its paneled walls and tin roof.


In the morning we drank Folger’s
with hazelnut coffee-mate in brown speckled mugs


while our pent-up humanity unfurled.
I haven’t seen you in a decade or two,


but somewhere in some digital ghost town
there is a picture of me from that weekend:


standing in the grass in my jeans
with a gaping hole in the knee, smiling at the sky.

Jessamyn Rains’ writing appears or is forthcoming in various publications including Dappled Things, Bearings Online, Spirit Fire Review, and Kosmeo Magazine, which she helps to edit. She lives with her family in Tennessee.