 Photo by Jorge Bermudez on Unsplash With every heaving breath Elpis took, I saw / god’s bet twinkling in her eyes. Her skin was / transparent—I could see each quiver of her pulse, each hiss / of her garden-snake veins—and I don’t know / if this is the perennial of God’s will but Mama told me / god’s angels have swallowed Elpis, leaving her / frostbitten. I still don’t know / what god Mama spoke of, but Papa says / Elpis is dying, he said her flesh would tighten around her bones /as her eyes sank and her legs crumbled. And I cried / I cried until my eyes rang bloodshot, the innocent glimmer / of Elpis between my matted lashes. Elpis, matted / with tears and a scream prying open my lips. / And slithering out my lips was the gutting sound of a mother losing / her firstborn daughter, of my pupils shrinking / back into my sockets and Elpis’s hands wrinkling my breath / and now when I put my palm in hers, my fingers interlace hers and I see / the prairies she never visited, the daisies and dandelions she braided / around her forearms, each petal falling with a beat of her heart. And underneath her glazed eyes, pink roses / swirling with the black rot as summer parasites blossom, blossom with the pain of a fresh bruise each time / I press it.
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 Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash for Kate Suppose I stopped running from the walls of your overly decorated bedroom. Suppose I let your laughter twirl my hair, suppose I let my stomach knot, you lay bedridden blocks away, your heart readying to stop. Suppose I stopped running and let the soles of my feet bleed into the road’s endless tar, bordered by the blanket of grass fields. Suppose the silence of summer became too sweet to swallow, the puffs of breath clouding the air like caramel cigar smoke. Suppose I stopped running and filled your maple-soft hand with mine. Suppose your pulse slowed as mine quickened. Suppose your eyelids, touched by gravity, finally closed. Suppose I stopped running and October never ended and the orange and brown leaves clung to their branches and my tears clung to my eyes. Suppose I sat in the frosted grass and whispered in your ear and stared into your sea-black eyes. Suppose pain blessed my heart and my unfulfilled promises don’t hurt anymore. Suppose my words will float off this wrinkled paper and my rhymes will be silk. Suppose you hear me. But you don’t. So I keep running.
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