Sarah Lilius is the author of the chapbooks What Becomes Within. (ELJ Editions, 2014) and The Heart Factory (Black Cat Moon Press, 2016). Some of her publication credits include the Denver Quarterly, Bluestem, Tinderbox, Hermeneutic Chaos, Stirring, Luna Luna Magazine, Entropy, and Flapperhouse.
Sarah lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and two sons.
Her website is sarahlilius.com.

An Ordinary Girl Meets a Man Living in a Tree

His beard full of snarls and dead leaves,
I wonder if birds nest there.

He invites me up but the boards look
weather worn, surely uncomfortable
and I was never

good at climbing trees, my brother
had the tree house, stashed with porn
and special Kool-Aid.

My best friend, Mary, climbed there
once, only once.

The man picks his teeth with a small
bone, doesn’t look me in the eye.

The frayed sign reads 294 days,
he speaks only to tell me,
he changes it every week.

I can see a scar across his bare chest,
just white enough to be called
yesterday.