If the Creek Don't Rise

by Leah Weiss

Rock Bottom cut the heart outta folks and let em walk round thinking they was alive when they won’t.

I felt little in this storm that beat and battered my world gone strange.

Even being four, I wondered who defended us girls. I was too shy back then to ask. Now I know—it’s nobody.

They wrap me in a blanket like I’m the baby that got lost.

“It don’t seem right that beat-down folks gotta get their hearts bruised, too.