I am in a stuck cluster of voiceless screams,

While yours and the storks rupture ceilings in vibrato.

Dormant in this plastic penitentiary as you deem to be in yours.

My color browns,

But if I were you

I would just be shading into my soft purple tone.

Yes, it’s okay.

It’s okay.

We are both cemented into this continuum of confusion and haste.

I have brought burden upon my soil, too.

My love.

The other saplings had needed the nutrients,

That is certainly true.

Look where this had been

If you resembled what gives the soul for dirt.

In both of your bitter huffing

You about blew away my peace-offering aroma.

But it is only you and not the stork,

Here that sits with me at this table.

The only of you both

Who still smells me.  Not the browning me of the now,

But the perky, hopeful me of four hours ago.

When the heat of day induced the freedom for smiling.

When light-heartedness directed the hands in careful selection and effortless caring,

Then you danced me through two of your fingers

While you two walked toward home.

Wasn’t it you who passed me to your stork?

You who had cherished

That very moment went you caught a glimpse

Of the stork falling victim to summers joyous

Efforts of happiness?

But you knew that the stork felt just as so, in such inverted means.

How, when she danced me was more comparable to a toggling

With apprehensive struggle.

Yes, I too have been left as a portion of the sensible and

More respectable whole.

Don’t think about that now, hear this

The soil still gives me,

My demand of water,

My need of nutrients.

The soil still bares me,

My clinging of roots,

My weightful body.

But must you remember, what is soil for?

And at my end, what will it have of me?

Then why, is your soil drying out the day

When the possibility of such prolific grounds

Could be made of it?

Oh my sweet, oblivious ender.

The earth cannot replace the soil in which you first took root,

In which you first grew stem and leaf,

But it works in strange ways.

When we are left aside of ourselves,

And look up at ourselves from the ground,

It is easier to see the stories’ circling.
 

lilac (lie-lack)
By: Angela McMahan