Emma Crockford
The Animals
Each morning, after I bring you the duck eggs,
I let you scrub my hands red in the sink water.
After I’ve watered the horses, ankle deep in the trough,
I let you sit me on the table,
pull the tangles from my hair, the grass from my feet.
​
I say, maybe it will rain, because you like me to guess,
but today you don’t want to play even this game.
​
I reach a thumb out to find the scar,
the knot on your neck from the winter you were nine,
and you catch my fingers, hold them there.
Emma Crockford is a high school senior at Rising Tide Charter School in Plymouth Massachusetts, where she is the editor and founder of her school's newspaper. Most recently, her work has appeared in Brown University's The Round, Gravel, Liminality, and Parallax. In the spring of 2017, she was the recipient of The Helen Creeley Poetry Prize. As the winner of the Helen Creeley Prize, she was given the honor of opening for headlining poets at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
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