The Sweet Release
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich (Title after Iain S. Thomas’s poem The Sweet Release) I am so tired I start to doze off, my head on your living room floor next to a pile of Scrabble tiles, curled up like a cat On an ottoman. I am so tired that the bath towel…
Summer of ’22
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich I have the route memorized now— Kennedy to 96A to 138, past Interlaken and Trumansburg to 89, straight into Ithaca. Cayuga Lake stamped on my wrist forever, gripping the steering wheel through golden fields and shining water, bright behind me in my rearview mirror. Behind me, gone is…
Daylight Savings
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich The water’s edge draws us closer. Plumes of dried, browning teasel, marsh grasses, and goldenrod stand tall above us as we crouch over the shore, just barely waving in the soft ripples of wind. Small raindrops touch the lake’s surface, each one barely making it the far distance…
Labor Day
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich It poured all night and all day. The world is blue. I drove over midday and we walked in it, through the gardens and the woods and the preserves. Fog lowers itself closer and closer to the ground as early evening approaches, and it starts to rain straight…
Night of No Stars
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich This day of the second summer knows that I adore you. The sun is clear on your face; warm, but not yet hot enough to be sticky. That night, I dreamed of you sleeping flat on me. – In the middle of the forest, I stare right into…
Awaiting August
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich Awaiting August, it’s like I’ve woken from a hundred-year-long springtime sickness. Late winter has never been easy for me— days worth of steel skies, cold winds sweeping flat fields of cracked, brittle cornstalks, brass puddles in the field behind my yard, last summer’s crushed, damp weeds stuck to…
Endearment
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich 11/02/2021-11/03/2021 No one needs to know that it was you who pressed closer to me early this morning. No one needs to know that I remember you from almost two Januarys ago, that I remember winter on the other side of the tall church windows, making the early…
New Blue Hue
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich I wish to be all the blue that touches you, The color around and between my fingers, Off the dark blue deep end. – I made my bed with the pink comforter today for the first time in days. Carry me to this bed. Lay me down and…
The Forests and the Fields
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich We hold each other Between the trees, in fields as Wide as the ocean. (Alternate) We hold each other In the forests, in wide fields Not bordered by trees.
Two Haikus: Evening Rain
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich Two Haikus: Evening Rain The rain tonight sends Everyone to their houses. Our fingertips and Faces turned up, we Walk, side-by-side, to my car Beneath the damp trees. Two Haikus: Evening Rain (Alternate) The rain sends all souls To their houses tonight. Our Fingertips turned up, We walk…
Good Luck Charm
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich It is the end of December, the time of the year when it is just as dark inside as it is outside. I have a toothbrush that belongs to me sitting on the edge of your sink now, the good luck charm that keeps me clean, that I…
Temperature
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich This December The snow falls beneath the streetlights, My guardian angel, As soft as it ever has— Saying you name and touching my face. The clouds are as bright as day. I squint upwards towards each of the one million tiny, white prayers. – It feels like it…
Temperature
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich This December The snow falls beneath the streetlights, My guardian angel, As soft as it ever has— Saying you name and touching my face. The clouds are as bright as day. I squint upwards towards each of the one million tiny, white prayers. – It feels like it…
Same Air
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich 10/31/2021 It feels like we are lovers. You come over and we just hold each other while we look out the window, down at the cold outside, down at the groups of people walking by below us, down at the light of the streetlights hitting the pavement. We…
Neighborhood: Three Haikus
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich A Haiku Trumansburg, New York I would stand in your Kitchen for one more autumn, Watching the leaves turn. A Haiku: Gold Leaves Ithaca, New York When the small gold leaves Cover the ground, I feel like I can breathe again. A Haiku: October Catalectic Haiku The light…
Two Haikus: At the Edge of the Waterfall
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich Buttermilk Falls State Park Will I be able To jump into these deep and Dark waters again? Will I ever hear Such silence again, like what’s Found beneath water?
A Short Story in Ithaca
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich A thunderstorm rolls into Ithaca. Its thunderheads collect in the black night.My bedsheets stick to my legs; sweat beads on the breath of my pillow, the nape of my neck. I sit cross-legged on my comforter and tie my humid hair up below my window in the light…
A Haiku: Breeze
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich In early June, theBreeze off the lake feels like theTouch of a lover.
The Cottage In November/A Haiku
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich For Taylor At the cottage, we had the same breakfast almost every morning: you had peanut butter and granola on a slice of sourdough bread so big we had to toast it by broiling it in the oven, and I had the same thing, except with bananas and…
The Surface Of The Snow
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich I was eighteen when I first saw the trees in the Finger Lakes with leaves that weren’torange, or at least this was the first time I remember seeing them this way.⁕The snow has started to fall again, laid as thick as it was last year in December;blood-orange below…
Waterfall
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich Your face fractured by the shadows under the stars, Under the slivers in the silver trees. The cold air touches my arms, my legs. Cold water in my hair, mist on the road back home. Your skin underwater, Where the dreams of the living live, Blue even when…
Fingertips/In Your Arms
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich Fingertips Soft, little distractions upon my skin. In Your Arms Truly warm, I breathe.
Fields
Photo by Greta Unetich By Greta Unetich The fields in the Finger Lakes are wide and lonely, far from people. But sometimes, something glitters in them like light on the water, like an almost-forgotten memory that is still warm to the touch like sunlight in September, a memory that is sometimes reminiscent of a distant…
Kindergarten 