Missing Unicorn in Cleveland, OH

            for J and D

I wake from the dream remembering

the time when E hooked her arm

through mine and helped me along the gravel

knowing my feet were still unsure

in the dream R ran her fingers

along my hair while I lay

in the fetal position in the backseat

she reminded me we had eighteen minutes

before the ripping away the safe space

where we were because there was too much rain

after the clear evening when E and her love

shared smiles caught in a story understood

at once only by the two of them and

to all of us, C and me and the women

generation upon generations ago who tried to bury

what was and is forbidden deep in the sea

the foam still stretching for all of us

the story of each other’s bodies in the dark

the joke of each other’s laughter the sharpness

of each other’s breath that cracks in the fire

we surround and for weeks I will know

even without her elbow threaded through mine

I do not walk alone do not fuss alone

over my hair which clings to me dampened

from the rain and from sweat for the first time

in over a year and I think of J who every year

collects the red as it comes

takes notes on the orange as it appears

waits as the yellow slowly prevails

D who in the passenger seat

keeps a smile on her face

because the leaves here are almost close enough

to the leaves where she was born

a year ago now we began

when they watched me

stand on shaking legs

our search when Cleveland was lit up
in the way summer seeps into us all

in a way I was pleading for everything

to be over knowing that nothing will stop

and stretched out in flickering bulbs over E 4th

the lights flash again and again

even when I’m too far away for the light

to touch my body

Sarah Dravec is a graduate of the NEOMFA. She has been awarded a University and College Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and her work has appeared in Gold Wake Live, Pinwheel, Radar, and others. Sarah lives in Northeast Ohio with her wife.