When the velvet greens are washed with rain and dirt,
And the dirt is washed with hands like the surgery of a seed—
The child I once hammocked visits me.
In the brief fluttering we have together,
I teach her how to throw a softball and never have it thrown back.
To prepare the soil to be cracked open by hoarfrost, anesthesia in the bark.
To love and never understand the heart it came from, to know a child by
The changes instead of the name. To catch the wind and accept where it takes her,
The whispers of boys, allowing worries to slip away.
The wolves that teach her how to howl,
of having wet consciousness.
Full moons. New moons led by stray light.
She inhales sharply, smears goji berries around her lips,
Grabs the world like a biscuit of crab and butter.
She exhales, allowing the spreading knife to plump her.
Her limbs unfold despite my greed in keeping her near.
She moves in her chrysalis, becoming a prodigy for the cold.
Her forewings briefly become sticks of calcium stuck in human density,
Walking on a borrowed vertebrae.
The round trees stiffen into boxes to capture her taste.
A hole in the sky slurps me into the museum–
In this eternity I think I can fly.
Nicole F. Kimball is an emerging poet and artist from Salt Lake City, Utah. Her work can be found in Atlanta Review, Mom Egg Review, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. A four-time Best of the Net Nominee, her debut work of fiction is forthcoming in print later this year. Nicole loves to spend time with her husband, and Chihuahua named Tinkerbelle.
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