Latent Prints

I don’t know how people live
without me. No, really. Everyday
I live with myself.
I’ve never not.

In the living room I cut
Aliya’s hair, and when she stood
a dark crescent moon
outlined where she sat.

Everything leaves something
behind, I’m told. Rope fibers,
gunshot residue, boot prints in mud
and muddy boot prints. If I were to step

outside my body and walk away,
I could see what shape
my absence takes.
Surely, it has a shape.

Madisen Gummer is a poet from Texas currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She recently received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Santa Clara Review, Variant Literature, Space City Underground, and elsewhere.