About the Author Autumn Collins attended The Ohio State University for four and a half years (including those infernal summer quarters) and emerged with a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in Women's Studies. She then landed a job, relevant to her degree, at McGraw-Hill Publishing, in the Middle School Science division, and has been correcting the grammar of interesting sentences about plate tectonics and supernovas for just over a year. Some of her work can be seen in such literary and online magazines as Plain Ink, Sniffy Linings, Comrades, The Absinthe Literary Review, the printed anthology Letters From the Soul, and the Sniffy 3 printed journal from the Sniffy Linings e-Press.

The woman shifts on the crooked stoop
Under the weight of the squirming child.
Dirty and ugly, the pair.
The mother’s matted blonde hair hangs in her eyes
And teases the tip of her cigarette
As the child kicks her unlaced shoe
Into the patchy grass.
It’s mostly dust out here
And the wind has coated these two,
Making them a part of the desiccated landscape.
Only when the mother swats at the girl
Is this decrepit portrait broken.
The child tries to run away
But only makes it to the edge of the gravel road
Before she realizes there is nowhere else to go.
Isolation has settled amidst the dust
That coats her shoeless toes,
Curled in defeat.