When her father beat her to death,
they asked me for a yearbook tribute.
I couldn’t remember anything,
other than her ripped jeans and her
baggy men’s flannel shirts, other than that
one time in the locker room, after phys-ed
she told me she liked my poems.
I had to make it up, wrote she loved
animals, believed in heaven.

I wasn’t surprised to see her
when I almost died. Eyes shut,
I met that legendary light, but no Jesus,
only Jessica, my escort to eternity --
or not. Instead she shook her head,
“You can’t die. You still
have to write the poem.” “Which
poem?” “How the hell should I
know? You haven’t written it yet.”

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A former Merchant Mariner, Robin Merrill traded in seafaring for a teaching career. Now her life is more adventurous, teaching English at the high school and college levels. Her poems were recently featured on The Writer's Almanac and are forthcoming in Poetry Southeast, Noneuclidean Cafe and Margie. In her spare time, she edits the small poetry journal Monkey's Fist and fixes up her big old house in Madison, Maine with her husband and their two hounds, Orville and Olive. You can visit her (and the hounds) at www.robinmerrill.com