Growth Renee Yaseen

15

Growth

Renee Yaseen

the chairs were still in puddles cuddling an empty hearth

Damp, faceless men huddled into a conversation.

I stopped outside their circle, And prognosticated: Rain, blust, vicissitudes and blistering. Winter’s decay eaten open the wounds of shredded land, The sores of illness stinging Saying, “this was a bad idea. You never should have come.”

And I stayed. Like a barnacle. Affixed betwixt where two currents met and never mixed. From my place I always liked seeing the birds in tough spring. Soft robins, Barrels of their chests puffed like strongmens’ cigar smoke and rolling bullets, Like my Julia chirps her times tables: Smoothed hands back in a shoelace bow,

Proud and eliciting pride in the way that dainty bracelets echo wrists — How a song is shaped by an archway.