An Excommunicated Nun Gave Me The Sand Dollar She Kept With Her Worry Dolls
“These chambers are filled with salt / stalactites—all yours. I would give this back / to you on your tongue. If that / would heal you.”
Sandra Sylvia Nelson has had work in many magazines including The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Northwest, Yankee, Tar River, The North American Review, The Iowa Review, and Ms. Magazine. She’s in Hard Choices, an anthology by The Iowa Review, and in the textbook Exploring Literature by Longman Press for the past 20 years.
“These chambers are filled with salt / stalactites—all yours. I would give this back / to you on your tongue. If that / would heal you.”