after Langston Hughes

What happens to a voice unheard?

            Does it droop
            like flowers covered in shade?
            Or crinkle like a leaf—
            Beneath a jagged rake?

            Does it squeak like captured field mice?
            Or crack and liquify—
            like sun-struck ice?

            Maybe it just falls
            like a heavy drape.

            Or does it escape?

Eva Lynch-Comer is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet currently pursuing her MFA in creative writing at Hollins University. Eva is the author of the chapbook Sonder, which she wrote during her residency with the “Writer by Bus” program in Roanoke. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in more than 15 literary magazines including Free Verse Revolution, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, and Capsule Stories.