Something About Pond Water

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.