Leslie Lindsay

Crevasse

What did we imagine would happen, when the wall opened like a fold of flesh,

  a wound eviscerated?

What did we hope for when the stairs unfurled like a ladder of bones 

into the dagger of earth?

What did we pray for when the verdant spring awoke the depth of worry, 

the gaping gaze of the woman in the mirror?

Did we see her, tucked in those dark confines, splayed in some unknown crevasse, 

where her worry turned into psychosis, 

and all we knew from 

/before/

fell into madness?

Leslie Lindsay's writing has been featured in The Millions, SEPIA, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Hippocampus Magazine, MER Literary, Autofocus, The Smart Set, Brevity, The Florida Review, Levitate, ANMLY, the tiny journal, The Cincinnati Review, ELJ Editions, Essay Daily, Mutha Magazine, Ruminate’s The Waking, Visual Verse, Heimat Review, Manifest-Station, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver Magazine, Motherwell, with forthcoming work in CRAFT Literary. Her work was nominated for Best American Short Stories She resides in Greater Chicago and is at work on a memoir excavating her mother’s madness through fragments. She is a former Mayo Clinic child/adolescent psychiatric R.N. and can be found @leslielindsay1 on Twitter and Instagram where she shares thoughtful explorations and musings on literature, art, design, and nature.