When I say heart I mean

~after Saara Myrene Raappana

the tender, folded place inside my chest 
that misses you, your blue blue eyes, 
your pout, your questioning, that storms 
like U.P. storms, snow sideways 
from the lake pushed against car doors, 
that cracks like ice come spring, moan 
of melt releasing waves, that beats, 
won’t stop beating, even as yours ceased. 

ANDREA SCARPINO

Andrea Scarpino is the author of the poetry collections Once Upon Wing Lake, What the Willow Said as It Fell, and Once, Then, and coeditor of the anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. She is coeditor of Nine Mile Magazine and served as Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from 2015 to 2017.