Rachel Riebe

You know the feeling-
the gut sink, hollowed out
stomach-turn
like someone’s gone and
fisted your solar-plexus and all that’s left
is the ache,
the ache,
the dull gray ache of
knowing you’ve been
knocked off your axis
out of rotation
wobbling, irregular
through a time and space
that does not know the meaning of
forgive, much less
forget
and the blackness
that’s surrounding is thick,
un-navigable
unlit by any
wayward
stars.

Rachel Riebe is an MFA student in the creative writing program at Hamline University. She lives in Lindstrom, Minnesota, where the water tower is a rose mauled teapot, the stores are labeled in Swedish,and the local Dairy Queen routinely wins the title for being most profitable in the state. (Not that she,her husband, and their infant daughter would have anything to do with that.)