periwinkle skies, blowing clouds
out of our view, soap through bubble rings,
braiding string into daisies, the catmint
you knitted into my hair, slipping starlight
between your fingers with the dexterity
of a twilight thief, brushing out my curls
into eighties waves, a nest of all
the moments i hid in my bra so you would forget
i remembered, your soft hums stick in my head
oozing through my day, molasses sticking to
every thought i already offered to you,
and i have been sitting at your altar since
day turned to dusk turned to dawn turned to now
waiting for you to tell me it is okay to leave
but it is summer, so time shifts and between
time zones, i keep missing you, so your smile
has colored every poem i have written since that day.
sometimes i wonder how my days passed
before you tangled yourself in their fabric.
plasma
i press my fingertip to yours and the warmth blooms,
rosy and blood-deep, across my skin, web cascading from
the uneven point of your nail and the indent where it dug
into my skin. you, you are so warm. your weight stacked
on top of mine, the sky balancing on atlas— but i would not
trade this for the world. tracing the calluses that spiral out
of my fingertips, a map to somewhere long lost, somewhere
you think you could find and i thought no longer existed.
it is as though i constructed this flimsy structure and you,
you transformed it, and now it stands on its own, leaning
in the wind like it will collapse and you smile like you know
it will not, but i have built it to fall but you are always right,
because it doesn’t. take me somewhere cold, i am sick of the
rain and snow and sun, take me somewhere my soul will freeze
into an approximation of a new england snowman, lopsided
button smile mirroring my own, stick arms propped up in a lazy hug.
it is cold, take me somewhere warm, like your arms, intake
me intravenously, i want to know what it is like to dwell in your
bloodstream, i want to fall asleep nestled right here—
Diya Sandeep (she/her) is a student poet at Phillips Exeter Academy, based in New Hampshire. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Phillips Exeter's Pendulum, Hiraya Literary, and White Rose Muses.
the sun sets later every day and i pretend to understand— the days go on