I’ve resolved to stop starting sentences with because

and nowhere to say sorry.

Even though I am sorry

to have spent $18.99

for a mouse deterrent that clicks and flashes

in the warm engine compartment.

We all want someplace warm and quiet to sleep.

It’s snowing, did I mention? Maybe you already looked outside,

watching it turn the skinny pine shadows white,

how it collects in little drifts on the windshield wipers.

Where should I park when I return to the city?

A new ordinance: No person shall sleep in a parked motor vehicle

between the hours of 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM.

Maybe I could write a letter to my representative,

telling these elected men--always men in Montana--

that their dream and my dream of home look different.

What does it look like out your window?

Out mine this spring flurry fills the gap between trees,

hiding the jumbled geographies I drove slowly over.

Did you know gyp comes from gypsy comes from caravanning

with home and family and food all clinking together,

memorialized in a stigma of frugality and bartering.

If not a slander, then a romance: I’m such a gypsy,

a woman with rose-water hair says

simply for leaving one place for another.

Already the white moves into melting,

becoming nothing but a horoscope

read over breakfast and forgotten

as the day turns another hour older.

I am not a gypsy, not homeless, not lawless.

I am learning

home is wherever I soften

my guard to sleep.

Linds Sanders (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist in graduate school with the intention to learn where Clinical Mental Health Counseling and art intersect. Her poetry enjoys burrowing in publications like FOLIO, Open Door Magazine, and occasionally fetches a prize. Her artwork darts in and out of art galleries as well as national and international publications such as 3Elements, Ilanot, Harbor Review and elsewhere. At the end of the day all her work comes home to rest at LindsSanders.com and IG @resounding_bell.