Tuesday night, she was in my dreams

Telling me about how her house stood
where the water treatment plant is now,
and that everything around here was a
huge forest, that people hacked and
hacked it all down and built these houses
far too close to the water. She told me
that her father wanted a son, built a
treehouse before she was born and told
her it was a castle, so she made tiaras
out of vines, leaves and flowers, wrote
love letters and sent them down the river
in glass bottles, but no one answered.
She told me that the forest was hers,
all of this land left to her and no one
to share it with, that she can't bear to
leave what was left of her forest.
She left her voice on the breezes that
blew through the park nearby, told me to
look for her in the morning. I haven't
had a solid night of sleep in weeks and
​I can't get her voice out of my head.


Kendall A. Bell is a native of Bergen County, NJ who transplanted to Burlington County in early 2001. His work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, most recently Bare Hands Poetry and Scythe. His twelfth chapbook, Paper cuts and iodine will be out in July 2012. He is president and a co-founding member of the Quick And Dirty Poets, founder and co-editor of the online journal Chantarelle's Notebook and the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press. His website is www.kendallabell.com and his chapbooks are available through www.maverickduckpress.com.