Appear where there was not
     but a slow heartbeat.
Sweep in to save
     this lonely soul that wavers with no strength.
Your fist yearns to hold my heart,
     as fragile as an autumn dapperling.
Please don’t crush it.

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Shari Wilder is a Cherokee writer and student at Northeastern State University. She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Belladonna’s Garden Literary Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Talon Literary Journal Volumes 9 and X, Freedom Fiction Journal, and is upcoming in The New Territory Magazine Issue 19. Instagram-@written.by.shari