january.

(listen to episode 30, part 2 of Line Break to listen to how this poem was inspired by a line that amaryllis wrote, and to listen to her poem that was inspired by one of my lines!) 

Periwinkle skies in the middle of the night. The inelegant purr of my typewriter. Lucid dreams, I’m aware of a complete numbness in my body that I mistake for loneliness.

I only throw pennies in pairs, seventeen years of tossing salt over my shoulder never blinded any demons. I want to crack open pistachios while the world orbits around me, the Earth itself is sometimes poetry.
 
Cacao powder, dried flowers pressed into books with gilded pages, spilled espresso makes ink beads that spread out on homemade paper like a ripple in the water.
 
I walked on the frozen lake a few years ago, looked below my feet at time suspended in midair, wondered how I got to where I was. I am in a thousand memories in one second: pink hair ties, sand between my toes. All the different heavens. Count to one hundred because I’m waiting to be found.
 
What does it mean to be in love? I gather pennies by the handful and stuff them greedily into empty pomegranate bodies.

 

eyesofIris

VT

YWP Alumni Advisor

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