"What It Was Like" by Maria Dylan Himmelman

You may never stop asking so I will tell you

We were hunted like prey and forced

to sleep under trees with the snakes

My father was adept with a spear, though

there wasn’t enough game in the world

to sate us, so we ate roots and bugs

while sitting around a sputtering fire

There was a single key that hung from

a string in the sky but no doors

Maria Dylan Himmelman has work appearing or forthcoming in Grist, Antioch Review, Western Humanities Review, New Ohio Review, and DIAGRAM, among others. She lives in New York City.