huntington
the roses are named
neon cowboy, dancing flame
and I say
Did you know bees sleep in the crux?
tj is so beautiful now,
measuring their aloneness across
the thicket—
we are pining for the return
of a thing that looks like home:
their green eye births thorns,
my outstretched arms like stamens—
our garden is waning and sometimes
i discern a closeness.
now, november
i.
on the kitchen table is my grief,
a kind of limp animal
stillness tempts my hands
but I have yet to
draw a simple conclusion—
there, the beaming sternum
almost transparent
i enter its supple and
suddenly feel very embarrassed;
the oblique realization
of living, having lived
How does one make absence
legible?
when I crush the red seed
language stops—
magnolias shed too much
of themselves in the fall.
ii.
absence follows grief
and blackberry bushes
mangle the skin, purple
undulating and becoming
a delta at the river
of my wrist
i eat madly, hastily—
stuff the berries in
my shallow pockets
things seem to have purpose
when consumed;
the echo of summer
is cloaked in loss.
Chloe Tsolakoglou is a Greek-American writer who grew up in Athens, Greece. She obtained her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School, where she served as the Anselm Hollo Fellow.