in this world we’ve made there are flowers that live rather than die in the cold, our bodies blooming against the river and never alone. your body scarred from taking what is yours, the cracks in your heart deepening with each slow inhale. i have only ever wanted to be that fragile, watching you find your body somewhere so far from body, slipping in and out of that hidden place like a snake through winding branches. unseen, tasting blossoming things if only to become light incarnate. this is eating away at that rot inside, the morning sun through your opaque window, a scratchy drawing of somewhere beautiful. those sticky things not even the crows want, so picky but you’ll beg them to eat you from the inside of your chest, different than it could be but today you don’t care because we’re standing in the water and all the lights are out. in the riverbed sadness doesn’t exist, in these floating places it is the easiest to be everything and nothing at all. fingertip to fingertip, a silent confession to nothing and the birds inside of you. don’t you know seeing me means you know me? they all must know this, these strange and secret bodies, why they squawk an i almost love you as you are, an i can’t understand. in the water i find you between your wings and chest and the streetlight goes out again, a bright and fleeting goodbye. a question marked in the light behind your eyelids. an ending, one ripple at a time.
About the author:
Madeline Augusta Turner prefers to be covered in glitter. Her writing, research, and work are centered around soil, love in the face of apocalypse, and place-based healing. Madeline has received a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, the Smith College Elizabeth Babcock Prize for Poetry, and a Fulbright fellowship. Read more at madelineaugustaturner.com and say hello anytime on Instagram @madelineaugusta.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
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