it's springtime & everyone is depressed
magnolia lake at my feet
rainy day unrelenting
seems like everyone I know is going through a break-up
I have aged a thousand years in the last three
one spring I drove an hour to gawk at rows of peonies
each one heavy as a human heart in your hands
& unfurling even more recklessly
my heart gayer than ever
& so full of longing I half-drown
last spring I embroidered a lilac branch
tried to keep the past close with a series of cruel pinpricks
memory after memory darting through me
like minnows through the siphon of my chest
I let a woman tattoo me with violets
draw a vine along my collar & ink it in
my fatal flaw is wanting permanence
I drag desire around like a zombie on a leash
some nightcrawler resurrection man
jolting corpses back to life in the garden
rhododendrons looking on open-mouthed & unamused
if I could ask the flowers for anything
I’d ask them how to forget
self-portrait as persephone topside
it’s uncuffing season & so I wander
into a field again, styx-drenched & skeletal.
a double-take personified. the nightlight too bright
for my nocturnal tapetum, this filigree
of stars a delicate migraine. april flings
itself wanton & the nymphs go looking
for something that passes as love. come spring
I get so tired of myself, sleepwalking
through the garden & waking up hungover.
the magnolia petals glide into a pond
around my feet & I think about gravity,
how heavy it can feel to be so light.
although this is my home, I cannot return
easily. my new heart barely anchored: half-
muscle, half-pomegranate. part of me
still underground, the future waiting.
Karah Kemmerly is a queer writer who grew up in Northern California and now lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon. Kemmerly completed an MFA in poetry at Oregon State University and has published work in Redivider, Breakwater Review, HAD, and DEAR.