I once was as shattered as the sky. The wings of bird, airplane, insect, and flower were not enough to glue me back together. When I erased the spring, I adored the infinity of the clouds & drank some iced tea
to console myself. The darkness sighed. The deep silence echoed in a chamber full of forgotten tongues. Even sounds can be ghosts—I dreamt of little girls who had a seventh sense of kindness. They crescendo in bright volume, amethyst hounds
searching through the debris of the living. Searching for something that couldn’t be found. Then my mother called me yesterday to tell me about her history—but it was just folklore. An old story that she couldn’t tell anyone except for me.
She apologized for keeping me up. I didn’t know how to talk with such a heavy tongue; so, onwards, the night would walk.
//
With such a heavy tongue; so, onwards, the night would walk as though a word was nothing more than a fantastical idea. I would dash in front of a car at one a.m. in a caffeinated shock. The driver would display a lightning bolt of sound. Oh, Maria,
Holy Spirit, or whoever else, and I would pray to any who would listen, unstop this watch. But the air was silent. So I forgot how to swallow and instead gulped down nature’s medicine before I could glisten myself awake. The summer was a carnivore, and I was in its gallows
of teeth. The blue depths of the sky etched themselves into my memory. Wildfires never seemed so tame. The highway that separated me from love and madness unrolled like never before—feathery emotions driving me through flatlands, through the darkest sea,
to show me what it means to love & let go. Oh, but I will never truly let go—or, if I did, it’d be only to remind me of forever.
//
Truly let go—or, if I did, it’d be only to remind me of forever. But the way you held onto your sadness in the hospital made me wander away. Honestly, I did not mean to sever death with his own scythe. I wanted to, little by little,
memorialize time with my own crystal. When we then fade, we fade into treasure boxes. My stone self that is no longer firedark, & I must wear a crown to bed every night to keep us from glissading from rivers. When I remember that holiness of poems-on-rock
in Aspen, I pretend that I am still alive, still listening to birdsong and metallic whispers. The air’s stillness a concerto, purpling like a bougainvillea creeping all along a fence. The veil lifts and I stare at myself, Eros,
or rather, his half-creature daughter, not quite beautiful, but just painted in all the right colors—floral & delusional.
//
But just painted in all the right colors—floral & delusional-- is a landscape of mountain and song that I want to remember forever. Concrete wounds that bloom, symphony moveable to the flight of a thousand morningbirds above me in December.
The quiet is infectious. In this lull of living, I lay awake, paralyzed with the not-waking. The grip of place tightening around my throat to choke out the words that form heartache. Where my language ends, the guitarist’s sound is a lightning
rod severing sound from silence and silence from my history. All this independence and not enough congregation: I wonder out loud to anyone who will listen if the volume of the music has a mystery sonorous only to those in the café. Somewhere in the sky above,
a bird sings a love song to the earth. In its softness, it reclaims a sky that changes everything, even us.
//
It reclaims a sky that changes everything, even us-- but you don’t believe me, do you? These things that shine like old, distant stars, their susurrations are no longer suspicious. Everything sings, but you don’t want to twist the vines
further just to hear one more note. The dirt, cold and hard, sings like steel; the rocks, so small and breath-
like, sing like canaries. & then; when this world rolls away into cloud, I imagine that this is a death
like brain fog. Like unreleased chemicals. I use my fingers to pick through this whisper of anxiety; the sun has no name here and I climb through sluice after sluice to find a new world. Refashion society
into a braided darkness of grass, tree, and sky. It is here that home has a new definition. A word I haven’t picked at.
Taylor Gianfrancisco is an MFA student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has published work in Dark Matter, Royal Rose, and Bone & Ink Magazines. She works and lives in Orlando, Florida. Her micro-chapbook, "A Delirium of Flowers," is out now.
Lynette Muniz is a Bronx based Puerto Rican artist. She serves in the U.S Army and also sells her artwork. Her works center around beautiful people of color and she always adds an element of whimsy to them.