used to follow me
when I went to physical therapy
running housewife errands
and in Montana
a highway patrol car
trailed us
when we drove back to Spokane
when my husband and I
returned from a family visit
to his stepmother’s house in Wyoming
before she had her accident
and passed on
just like the highway patrol car
gives up the ghost
and sometimes in Spokane
I get a ghost of a memory
that those police trail us too
like a vapor of a strange life
a nagging feeling
possibly wrong
but the island follows me
even in the States
Paula Anne Yup lives and writes in the Marshall Islands. She has written poetry since childhood and published since college days. She has over a hundred poems in print with work in anthologies (Feathers, Fins & Fur, Earth Beneath, Sky Beyond, A Kiss Still a Kiss, What Book!?), journals (Earth’s Daughters, Mid-American Review) and other literary publications. Her first book, Making a Clean Space in the Sky, was published in 2011 by Evening Street Press.