There’s a box to my left
that looks like pool noodles
and cage fighting made a baby—
it’s the box where my children play.

Slick, hideous structures
hold opportunities
for make believe and
thieving on the high seas.

Endless potential rests 
in four corners
like buried treasure
 to be plundered 
with a mischievous grin.

They’re irresistible,
my children,
and insatiable
(snack time already?)
churning engines 
of fun and love
and needs for
floors that bounce
and walls that heave.

Kelsi Folsom is a Texas-born poet and prose writer whose work is published in The Caribbean Writer, West Texas Literary Review, Motherly, Voice of Eve, Women Who Live on Rocks, and elsewhere. In addition to contributing regularly to Red Tent Living Magazine, she is the author of poetry chapbook Words the Dirt Meant to Share (Desert Willow Press, 2018) and Buried in the Margins, her first full length collection of poetry forthcoming with Finishing Line Press in 2020. She enjoys traveling with her husband and three kids, scouring estate sales, and occasionally putting her B.M. in Voice Performance to good use. Follow her writing and activities on Instagram @kelsifolsom.