harbinger of spring
Let's get morbid,
crossed legged visceral.
Dig your fingers deep into the wet clay soil
that squeezes at the fingertips the further down you go,
The rotting calendar pages bloom spores the color of fur on
the paralyzed cat rotting underneath the lilac bush,
turning the petals the most brilliant shades of blue.
What remains of the blackened skeleton of a three day
whirlwind love affair that smoked the entire time?
Onlookers beat the flames with thrice layered quilts and
held the embers close like iron stove heated bricks at the end of the bed
that still did nothing to warm their feet against the coming chill.
How have you forgotten?
I already told you this,
carved it into the crumbling tabletop with car keys, fingernails, pocketknives,
whatever sharp objects the guardians would allow me to posses
after they grew tired of checking the box of
was I danger to myself or those around me.
What do you mean they threw them all away?
Every single last one?
Do you mean to tell me that this whole city has been painted over,
knocked down, bricked up?
How can I bring forth memories of what is no longer present now?
Back to the before when the lime green walls
still held some comfort and were not bashed in.
When I was a child, no one ever thought to sit me down,
bent at the knee so we met eye to eye,
and told me that the tangible is only a fleeting moment.
That even driving past what was once hallowed ground brings
the bittersweet tang of iron to the tongue and
does not let up no matter how many spices one piles atop.
The beginning,
birth of ache without ache,
the first finger extended,
the downward stroke of charcoal against snow driven white.
All this without the coming promise of the exhalation that is finality
Rachael Gay is a poet and artist living in Fargo, North Dakota. Her work has appeared in journals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, Quail Bell, Rag Queens, Déraciné Magazine, Gramma Poetry, FreezeRay Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review and others as well as the anthology What Keeps Us Here (2019).