Waxes and Wanes
Sydney Holley
We would weep together on days like these,
almost seventy degrees. Not quite.
The natural light wholesome and nutritive
as if we resided in the Sunshine
State instead of Western Pennsylvania
A never ending anecdote of rusted bridges,
abandoned farmlands, an opioid crisis
Our own inherent War on Drugs- you and I
in a field blooming with dandelions and
snapdragons surrounded by 3 foot-tall yellow
sweet clover. I was amazed at the chlorophyll
filling the veins of the greens, walking overtop
either ragweed or crabgrass- who knows.
Trying to moderate the weightlessness in your
legs, you described these waxes and wanes
as lemony, meaty: something out of a cosmic
dust left at the very bottom of a neglected milky
way complex. That’s how I thought of us once
when we were at my mother’s house boxed
inside sickly scarlett walls, cawed at by birds
through a fog of cobwebs and allergens filming
an opulence of porcelain knick knacks. It smelled
like apple candle wax the first time but never
again after that. Just black licorice and rot, sassafras
sliced at the root and molded carefully into a bittersweet
sap. We will never stop gnawing on these
dried up roots. Chomping and chewing, parachuting.
The cawing continues because it must