Lauryen Casey
Fallen-
The morning mist dances in the field
The orchard shedding
Ka plink
Ka plunk
Thud
Thud
Thud
Those fallen
forgotten
And those still dangling
Persist as the branches drape
Over the fleshy graveyard
The soil below
Saturated in cider
Welcome the worms
Leaving boils on the bruised
Tell me you love me-
Tell me you love me more than the earth
Than air
Your first breath as the creaking screen door swings open
Frayed and useless
That one night as I was moving the rocking chair out to the porch
And pierced the mesh
Opening the door to the fluttering moths
You step out
The fresh hug of morning
Welcomes you
Tell me you love me more than the sun
You found a love for its siren
Its sting
As it slaps you in the face
And I hold your hand
As you flinch and flut
As night waltzes away
And the rays of day saturate your blinds
Tell me you love me more than the stars
More than the ones that will never be found
Those lost in the infinite
Those that when astronauts float,
They gleam just the slightest
And are overlooked by the Milky Way
With the fluttering of shooting stars as their butterfly wings take them across the sky
You once looked at me as an astronaut would
And once you found that I could gleam and glow
I was your Sirius
Until your journey continued and I was stuck
In the cement of the beyond
Looking at you the same I did the day we discovered one another
My gleam weakening as my longing grows stronger
And if the cherry blossoms have rosier cheeks
Then mine dusted in the paint the sun sprinkled onto me
And if the lavender smells better than my Chanel
And if the kiss of morning is softer than mine
(The sun doesn’t need Burts Bees chapstick)
And if my cardboard brown eyes don’t twinkle like Sirius,
Don’t flare and flash
Like a ribbon of magnesium caught in flame
Tell me this is more than a silly teenage romance