Near the empty soccer field, with it’s wide shoulders
the pink day fading, every beech & maple lit
husky purple & dim dusk swept feathery blankets over the streets.
You pulled the car over, stepped into the smell of frost
shivering clean sips of paperthin moonlight.
Humming pickup, thudding volvo,
flash of teeth & thrum of radio bass.
You crossed & stood
alone in the dry meridian
picked a small marigold, planted by the town department,
glowing secret in the quickening night,
burning elegy smell of cold pollen.
Two blinking stars, tiny petals
small fires in the blackness
your toes, cold
your breath, bitter in your mouth
the blossom, now crushed in your pocket
salty, a pollen stain you couldn’t see,
but smelt. Small ceremony
you almost didn’t stop for.
Savored
Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Cordella Press, Field Notes, the West Trestle Review, as a part of the collection So Many Ways to Draw a Ghost, and elsewhere. She is an interdisciplinary artist & anti-bias educator. More of her work can be found at www.AiyanaMasla.com