KELLY R. SAMUELS

@kellyrsamuels

Spare and Unadorned

Everything was removed

to adjacent rooms or taken

away by others. We were

left with bare walls

and honey-colored floors.

Light. Cast shadows some-

what like what you saw

walking miles from here

in dry heat peaking at 3.

Back when, there was floral

wallpaper that drove me

to drink—rose patterned,

pink and jaundiced.

Now: nearly nothing.

Some stones and picked-

clean bones on a sill.

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks—the most recent Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press, 2024) and Talking to Alice (Whittle Micro-Press, 2023.) She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in Denver Quarterly, december, River Styx, and Faultline. She lives in the Upper Midwest.