You play hangman
on the orphanage steps
in turn guessing words
with children who wear
broken flip-flops
and crush together
at your hip, eager to hold
your hand or impress you
with their small english.
across the hills a storm
moves. across the page
the charcoaled hangman
is closing in. but still
there is hope, still the sun
as you slowly make sense
of each small emptiness,
every letter bringing
you closer to an answer
and then it’s there
i l o v e r w a n d a
a small boy lays down
his pencil. the hangman
lays down his noose.
© 2014 Heidi Wallis
Image “Shall we play Hangman game? © Flickr user Shenghung Lin
Originally published November 24, 2014.
H. Wallis received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University, Chico, where she studied with Jeanne Clark, Ellen Walker, and Joanne Harris Allred. She currently works as a copywriter and finds time for poetry on the ferry between work and her home in Sausalito. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Critical Pass Review, Existere, The MacGuffin, Pennsylvania English, and Watershed Review.