Common House Magazine
WELCOME HOME
Return to Sender
Lauren K. Carlson
All wrapped up,
I send myself
to remote inter-
continental islands.
Postmark my head,
glue shut my mouth.
How freeing
it is, this first
gesture toward hereafter.
And when they knife
open the envelope
bits of me are scattered
somewhere along
the carrier’s route
sprouting seedlings.
A package arrived
with nothing inside.
That’s what I mean
about losing someone,
you rip open to get at
what’s gone.
Lauren K. Carlson is the author of the chapbook Animals I Have Killed (Comstock Review Chapbook Prize, 2018). Her work has recently appeared in Crab Creek Review, Salamander Magazine, Terrain, The Windhover, and Waxwing. In 2021, she won the Levis Stipend from Friends of Writers for her full-length collection Steelhead (forthcoming 2025). Her writing has been supported by Tin House, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Lauren currently serves as editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and holds an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.