by Callie Crouch
There’s a swamp under my rug and I wonder
how long I’m supposed to let it fester. Nights
of loneliness have turned a good carpet to
pond water and tough skin to pulpy socks.
On my back, floating on the cream-colored
surface of my living room, I’m reminded that
someone once told me the carpet you cry on
knows everything about you, which I guess is why
mine sometimes fosters tadpoles like the ones
I used to catch in youth. I don’t catch them today
and I feel like that makes sense to me, growing into
not needing something anymore, even if it’s surrounding you.
Callie Crouch (she/her) is an undergraduate English major at Saint Joseph's University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the university's literary magazine, the Crimson and Gray, and was published in the 2022 edition. Her work is also currently featured in Olit Magazine's 2022 winter Issue, Wingless Dreamer Publisher's anthology Dulce Poetica, and upcoming in Quarter After Eight. She is from Florida, but now lives in Philadelphia, and spent this past summer studying travel writing under poet Dr. April Lindner while living abroad in Rome, Italy.