by Melissa Fite Johnson

At the antique mall with a friend,
buried in a bin: a Florence Griffith Joyner doll,
comes with a full set of nail stickers. I read once that
during a race her nail flew off; after it
ended she walked the track to
find it. Her miniature wears a one-legged bodysuit, neon
green and pink, the detail I most associate with
her. My friend asks if she’s still alive. I look
it up—no, 1998, seizure in her sleep,
just before her 39th birthday. I only now, in midlife,
know how young that is to die. When I was
little, forty was my father’s scratchy cheek,
my mother’s face cream. Forty was inevitable. Death had
not yet entered my mind, though soon I’d learn. My
old babysitter, my classmate whose father skidded
past the stop sign one winter, Anne Frank, Titanic, I couldn’t
quit learning death. I’m still learning it,
researching even the slightest
symptoms, wondering each birthday how much more
time. I set down Flo-Jo’s cardboard home. My friend holds
up another doll. I look this one up too, déjà
vu, only she’s alive, Billie Jean King,
white tennis dress with blue Peter Pan collar,
x number of years left. Next month, I’ll turn forty. Well—
you never really know. I should. 4-0. In tennis, the
zero is love. 40-love. I would love to turn forty.

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Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.

by Melissa Fite Johnson

A garden born beyond my window. Not my
backyard, my neighbor’s. Before
coronavirus, before isolation, she and I
didn’t acknowledge each other.
Every night my dogs spilled
from my back door, and she sat outside with a
glass of wine listening to—something. I’d
hush to spy but could never tell.
I imagined long-distance love, her voice
joined with his. Maybe Rosetta Stone, too low to
know what language. No wave, no hello.

Little pots line the wooden deck,
matching sprigs of green. A tarp covers
nothing, for now. She tells me, You’re the
only person I’ve seen in days.

Planting’s like praying, both
quests for communion. We
receive stale wafers on our
shining tongues, gather
tomatoes fallen off the vine too soon. I’m an
unbeliever who only pulls weeds, puts
voids in the ground instead of life. But
witness this small miracle: she was
X in her yard, I was
Y in mine. We’re still rooted in these
zones, but now our voices soar over the fence.

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Melissa Fite Johnson is a high school English teacher who lives with her husband and dogs in Lawrence, KS. She is the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Sidereal, Stirring, Whale Road Review, Broadsided Press, and elsewhere. See more at melissafitejohnson.com.