2024 Competition

Hetty Cliss

Retrograde Sonnet

Exes haunt my head like ghostly kisses

on untouched cheeks and necks.

Weeks of cycling backwards, Mercury

refuses to let me keep my feet.

How many years must we crawl circles

until they unspool to straight lines?

The past is a snail shell, pressed under shoe.

Healing is a staircase and I have no energy

for the incline. Don’t text your ex. Don’t scroll

to pictures you’d rather forget. Don’t forget

to print and double-check your work before

you submit. I’m sure I’m forgetting

something. Falling through the stories

of people I once knew. Through myself too.