time brines 

and wrinkles deepen

 

during times like these, I'd rather be pressed 

like a tulip shoot

 between the pages 

of a diary,  

and left to dry,

 preserved 

hidden from the scorn of spotlight

as it spins over the face of fascists

well-known and

smiling, 

glisten-toothed and hungry 

eager to make nations forget 

the smell 

the soot

of a furnace 

primed by algorithms

and photo ops 

and all the reasons you're told

of why your daughter

doesn't call you anymore 

(tho you still call her William) 

 

I miss the days when I would tremble

just to be alive 

to stretch against a gentle-throated frost

but now, left wondering where we are 

i crave the certainty of the dark beneath the soil 

rather than the dark that stretches out

out into the future

forever