Olga Rukovets is a writer and editor living in New York City, where she was the 2018-2019 Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation Online Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers Magazine. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida. Her writing has appeared in Potomac Review, Passages North, Parcel, Jelly Bucket, 5X5, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere.
In Memory
We cannot all be elephants:
some of us leave our dead
for the neighbors to bury,
some of us learn
to forget.
When your sister drowns
you are still a child.
You circle her small bones
with your own,
cradle her body
to shore.
You wear grief daily
like a protracted gown
& your family herds
behind,
split in two,
carrying your train
on both sides.
*this poem first appeared in Passages North