By lizzy sparks
I leave an offering, half a cup of cheap pomegranate
wine and two 50-cent coins. To make a half of a whole
you need two. I ask for safe passage. The river
stinks of sewage and hot air. It is still, flat, and brown.
I am Orpheus. I would follow you anywhere.
I would swim the length of the Olentangy,
drink its radioactive sludge, turn my skin
inside out and green, Thetis dipping me
in the River Styx just to see you again.
There is a bottle of Fireball embedded in the dirt,
dripping gold. I like to think it’s an offering too.
Lizzy Sparks (she/her) recently graduated from the English and creative writing program at Ohio State, where she read for the annual Non/Fiction Prize and The Journal. Her work appears in Sheepshead Review, JAKE, Across the Margin, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in the Midwest.
