It’s Been Two Years

so when her lovely face appears—
          a friend request
that seesaws seesaws in your chest—
          you must accept
that she’s been laid to rest.

*

Doomscrolling

A smiling child of five or six. No caption,
yet my too-quick heart supplies one,
slow to grasp there is no massacre, no gun.
It’s just a photo of a friend’s young son.

*

Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut poetry collection is Oxblood (Able Muse Press, 2022), which was named a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award and the Richard Wilbur Award. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Crab Orchard Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. She serves as associate poetry editor at Able Muse and as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.