I Haven’t Written a Good Poem in Just About Ever
but I’ve been composed of palm lines and kissed a breath into the neck of love. Sugar cubes passed between these teeth made for lips and freckles. Don’t you dare me with those shoulders – I’ve crossed their bridge and you mine. My bones turned silver with warmth then dissolved into petals. They landed on your ache a perfume of touch. I took notes, left them in your pockets and drawers, and wrote from memory.
In Response to Some Lines She Posted Long After I Left
“I stepped back, and I turned around, and I walked down through the rhododendron and never looked back.” -Charles Wright I know what that must have felt like – a heartbeat wrapped in petals, pulling layers away from a confused dream. I know how it is to leave without needing your shoulders to tell you you’ve arrived. I know that I never showed you a garden, only a bed where we could have had rhododendrons. ___ Maggie Rue Hess is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she indulges in many lattes and even more books. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Minnesota Review, Connecticut River Review, and Backchannels, among others.