Nicole Robinson

Here in the After

Second Runner-up for the 2026 American Literary Review Award in Poetry, Judged by Carl Phillips

We linger at the lake a little longer,
try to move a little slower.
Nothing with speed should be done
in the undoing done by someone else.
The done was undid while we slept.
We walk the pace of the Blanding’s turtle,
search for space in this new after.
We replay the event’s timeline before
two Sanderlings bring our minds back
to the shoreline. They strut the water’s edge
and pause to shove their bills in sand
to comb for critters. Near the tributary,
a Blue Heron stands on a rock as it does
every morning. Some moments are as they were,
some grasp at our chests and all we can do
is gasp, slow our breath, search for life
heading southwest, a flock of White Pelicans
overhead. We’re doing our best with surviving.
The water pulls back to itself before
it folds into a splash. We search each wave
for the pause midway, like the space
our breath rides as we breathe.
We are here in the after and we can’t leave,
not yet. There are hag-stones and fossils
marked by age and pressure, a history
only half understood. We gather handfuls
to hold the past a little closer, a little safer
from erosion. We sit in the sand,
disengage from imagining the next page
of our lives. Whoever we were
is not who we are but we stand,
brush sand from our clothes, steady our steps
while we study waves, look back
to see our shadows following just the same.

Nicole Robinson is the author of Without a Field Guide (Unbound Edition Press), finalist for the 2024 Ohioana Book Award for poetry. Her poems have appeared in Revel, Grist, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of Individual Excellence Awards in poetry from the Ohio Arts Council and the Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. She lives in Ohio and serves as a narrative medicine specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital.