Your father was a florist,
gone before I met you,
who left behind his plants to bloom
as you grew up. A kind-of stand-in:
life in the absence of it.
When you moved back home you
sent me orchards by text message:
sweet, pretty things.
Postmodern romance, we joked:
the image of a thing
(a kind of stand-in)
is not the thing itself,
but it is something.
Ode to Self: Lulu’s.
you should have known better
than to bring your friends who
are visiting from out of town to
the bar where you first met
the boy that made you cry last night,
even if they do have free pizza.
word salad.
sunrises are cruel, gas station coffees burn.
I wave goodbye to the basement roots
and delight in their shadow,
chantilly lace and thunder in the attic,
a microcosm of exhilaration—
“I’m youth, I’m joy”—
vulnerability, specifically.
I open my mouth and my ears:
bad fruitcake makes a good a paperweight.
Sara Iacovelli (@sarayikes) is a New York native living in Colorado for graduate school. She is an avid proponent of short stories and short skirts.
