When I turn fifty the roses will die,
and schools will reopen, as promised.

Teachers will reinvent learning
and make ghosts of poetry

the way poetry made a ghost of your voice.
Times Square will erupt into a murder of crows,

and sparrows will plummet to their death, rejoicing
because God knows the number of hairs  

on the back of your hand,
only that’s not how the Bible verse goes, 

that’s not how the ghosts will sing
of your birthday, while the moon remains 

soft as bread and our stomachs round
with age. I’ll read one of your poems

into a smoky mirror and say your name
three times, wait to hear the hum

of your breath like a low tide,
wait to see if my left breast has

one lump or two. Will I still be
as sweet? Even roses know better.

Nancy Hightower has been published in Longleaf Review, Entropy, Sundog Lit, Barren Magazine, and Drunk Monkeys, among others. Her first collection of poetry, The Acolyte, was published in 2015 by Port Yonder Press and was a finalist for the Elgin Award Book of the Year. In 2018, she she was granted a micro-residency at the Strand Bookstore by The Poetry Society of New York as part of their joint Poet-A-Day Project.