__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Halfway between her house and mine there was a hill
we could bike to, but we met at the corner stop sign first
in our flip-flops and braces and braids. We stole our
mothers\u2019 body spray and smelled like cucumber melon
the whole summer. I still remember the feeling of flying
down the hill. I still remember the sight of her back,
t-shirt billowing, more afraid for her than for myself.
We were thisclose to losing control, to growing up.
What happened next? A little of both. I don\u2019t think
we ever said goodbye. Nowadays we both have daughters
and don\u2019t live too far apart and haven\u2019t seen each other
in years. But when I come to the hill, I think of her \u2013
how we dared each other to take our hands off the handlebars.
We let go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rachel Beachy<\/strong> lives in Kentucky with her husband and children. Her debut collection Tiny Universe<\/em> will be published by Kelsay Books. Her poetry has also appeared in Ephemera<\/em>, ONE ART<\/em>, The Orchards Poetry Journal<\/em>, Quiet Diamonds<\/em>, Sky Island Journal<\/em>, wildscape. literary journal<\/em>, and others. She was shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n __________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n \ud83e\udca0 Back<\/a> Next<\/a> \ud83e\udca1<\/p>\n\n\n\n To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin<\/a><\/em> or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program<\/a>, please visit Submissions for details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Be stFri end Rachel Beachy __________ Halfway between her house and mine there was a hillwe could bike to, but we met at the corner stop sign firstin our flip-flops and braces and braids. We stole ourmothers\u2019 body spray and smelled like cucumber melonthe whole summer. I still remember the feeling of flyingdown the hill.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[234],"tags":[75,145],"class_list":["post-20208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retro-summer","tag-boudin","tag-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20208"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20559,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20208\/revisions\/20559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/01\/boudin-logo-1.jpg\"){kind=logo}
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