No one was more shocked
than I was when you said,
Mommy, I felt something
tickle my leg and you laughed,
but I pointed and said, look,
look the living room is a lake
and you said, Oh, Mommy,
that’s so silly. It’s just pretend,
but I said, No, look, and this time
you saw it too, a fish leap
right between us. You commented
on how nice the water is for
swimming and so we thought,
why not?

***

Lisa Stice is a poet/mother/military spouse and the author of full-length collections, Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018) and Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a chapbook Desert (Prolific Press). Before the Marine Corps began moving her to other parts of the country, she lived in the deserts of the Southwest – Southwest Colorado, Southern California and Southern Nevada – for more than 30 years. She currently lives in North Carolina, but still dreams of the desert.