Wanderlust
I used to catch falling stars and set them adrift at sea
I formed constellations out of moon dust and traced galaxies into the sand
Waves crested and crashed, and sea foam swirled around my feet
And in the water, I saw the universe inviting me to dive in
Crave
I can still taste your honey on my lips,
your caressing tongue, bitter and pollen-laced.
Whispering bees brush velvet cheeks,
releasing saccharine nectar that floods a willing throat,
savoring your honey
– aelily
Author’s Note: I was born on a sinking island and named after a star. “Wanderlust”’s focus on escapism is a reflection on my wishes to travel and explore. It is also an ode to my mental health struggles—depression, anxiety, and PTSD.…
...continue reading
I get this way, this time of year.
Light begins to shift and I will notice
………………that wheel turning.
Cicadas whirring louder, they will know.
They beckon their own dying
………………soon to come.
Come back, I ran ahead. The sunlight is still bold
and I see blue sky through the haze of heavy air and
………………brave cicadas. They leave their little shells some years,
carapaces rattling on the tree trunks. Less than corpses,
………………more than ghosts. I’ve plucked their wings of cellophane
to make my art, scavenged from the undead
who are gone to other places underground
………………to wait for seven years. Late summer is the worst part
of the southern year, when I turn older and begin to welcome dying
vines and fleeing birds and memories of school and change and
wood-smoke, bonfires, sweaters.…
...continue reading
My two brothers share a bedroom in the middle of the hallway. I share a room with my sister down at the end, across from my mom and stepdad’s room.
My sister and I share one full-sized bed that’s pushed right up next to the window. I sleep on the window side. On the wall across from my sister’s side is a big mirror and when we jump on the bed, we watch ourselves in it.
Laughing.
Floating.
Hung up by a nail next to the mirror, right by the door frame, there’s a small, pink porcelain Lord’s Prayer wall plaque. It has dark pink and blue flowers in each of the rounded corners and the prayer is printed in fancy writing in the center.
Every night I clasp my hands underneath my chin and recite the prayer in my head as I kick my sister’s cold feet away.…
...continue reading
The old hickory dropped
Nut-brown seeds that we’d smash
Our fingers trying to crack – the filled dirt innards
Became our pretend dinner before
Dad bandaged up the bloodied tips.
Now it’s dead and dead cold from
Standing in the Florida heat with no
Blanket or break from its production.
The fallen branches were chainsawed to
Smoker bits at Christmas or Labor Day.
We never thanked it with water or words
For the shade and meals and memory-wounds.
Mushrooms have invaded our yard
Except the patched dirt that’s been
Driven on for far too long. Nothing lives there.
Nothing lives long enough for our children’s children anymore.
We dig and build atop and strip the soil before it’s passed on.
The flowers he gives his wife – when a newborn is
Borne by her alone for twenty odd years – wilt and crumble within a week.…
...continue reading
I crouch in leaves and needles
under pines and water oak. I crashed my way
to this place through the saw-vines and mimosa
avoiding poison ivy and backyards. Vibration
escalation, terror of arrival, noise and
bulk and overwhelming
joy, blur and roar and clack and whistle
fast and loud and large
receding sudden.
Fading, gone.
The noise of startled birds
returns, and the sound of my own breath.
After long enough, I rise,
lift my weight on steady hands and feet.
No rails for me no predetermined route
marked out on maps. No tickets
and no whistle. Crunch of footsteps
chosen, breath. The scratch of nails
on trunks of trees and long-discarded
glass and rusted metal.
Times crashes into me at the crossing
but I will just bend like the river.…
...continue reading
they tell me I cannot donate, stamping
the word
……………..REJECTED in red across my
wrist like a branding iron, but less superficial.
I had felt an obligation to sign up, because
I was a universal donor—a term which,
I recognized, was quite ego-inflating;
……………..perhaps, I mused, I could play savior,
and be needed, and be one of many.
I thought there might be something poetic in
seeing the blood move from one shriveled
bag to another,
……………..skin like plastic and vice versa,
or at least, I figured it’d make me a better poet,
to say my heart had beat outside of me;
yet, in the reflection of fluorescent
……………..lights on the linoleum floors I saw
……………..……………..my resolve begin to crumble.…
...continue reading
When I told you how I’d
love to take a picture of you—
I was talking about you as
you were then, in motion,
eyes alight,
hair framed in a halo
of the dying sunlight,
looking, looking, looking—
at something far away,
something through the glass
and the engines, the asphalt
and the crawling things—
something far from
this wretched place,
something far from me.
I wished to capture you as
you were then, in a moment that
we would never return to.
But the memory, I suppose,
is permanent enough.
A slow-developed shot,
already murky,
like vintage film.
Someone else will have you
that way again, and it won’t be me—
But at least I can hold on to this.
I will have you
in my mind, if nowhere else,
just as you were and
will never be again.…
...continue reading