Kathy Bjornestad is a Wyoming Fellowship for Creative Fiction recipient and received an honorable mention for the Neltje Blanchan Award. She has published in Christian Science Monitor and in anthologies such as Pasque Petals and Green Elephant. She is part of South Dakota’s 2024 Speakers’ Bureau.
Absence
If you were truly gone,
I should feel it like
a cold wind
in February,
an empty desert
or blind decent,
a chasm separating
memory from feeling—
I would be an acrobat, suspended
between knowing and imagining
someone else’s arms holding
you back from the edge,
keeping you from free fall.