Partial Letter Found in a Hymnal by Sheriff Epp’s Daughter, age 12 Friendship Methodist Church, Three Weeks After the Funeral

by Shannon Amidon

Just because I let you touch me like a husband today
does not mean you ever will again. When the hail
thrashed your shoulders and rain painted your shirt to them,
I took pity, invited you in from your work
in my garden. Though I opened the door to you
with no one else home and only weather for witness,

hear me: I give you no false hope that this winter
you will sip my homemade wine or rest your boots
under the red oak table fashioned

for me as a wedding gift. You mean only
that I am the same girl I have been when
I’ve felt alone and frightened of the dark –

Shannon Amidon’s poetry has appeared in Louisiana Literature and the Piedmont Literary Review. She was named a poetry finalist in the 2005 Emerging Southern Women Writers’ Contest sponsored by Berry College in GA. She currently works at the Eastern Washington University Writers’ Center and in the EWU Academic Advising Center.

Author’s note: These five poems are from the second section of the manuscript “Wish for an Unknown Color,” which tells the story of a crime of passion that takes place in the piney hills of North Louisiana. Another group is forthcoming in Willow Springs.