Remembering Lakes
By Madelyn Biven
It’s beautiful chopped.
Your skin when we met was lettuce green,
cabbage white. Everything we ate, we became.
I always believed sun thirsted for your
hazel, that’s why I lit candles close to
you before day woke up, to see your hair
drop into your mouth. To open your buds
in the dark. We placed small fires everywhere
and watched the world stain. You saw gold bands in
my irises like ropes of daylight in
winter soil. As you studied their curves,
clouds fell into your eyes.
Autumn spun us into tangled spines and
it was November when I said: I feel
wax and ocean at once. Then I found sounds
everywhere— soft vowels made me stare at
you, see you in neon colors, see you
after school. When we lived in North Carolina
I ate you more than anything else. Your
sweat tasted like afternoon. Your breath like
skim milk or nettle tea. I had a secret
spill of eating you all in one bite. You
drank me like water. Blur and epiphany
in swaggered buzz across the ceiling in
upward diagonals. I flower pressed
you between my bones and my heat. I let
you wilt, and fall out of me.
I wanted to explode so I shattered
into a kaleidoscope. You saw my
fragments as parts to put together to
design a bridge, a root, a sand castle,
symmetry, or a flower with black seeds.
You found sanctuary in me because
like thunder, I sang about wetness. That
is what you were eager for—pouring.
This is why I love you and spoons.
And sometimes I need to tell you I’m wrapped
up in it, kind of spun out on it, kind
of sucked into it, mouthing it, crowning it,
making magic smoke with it.
But instead I scribe in loops on art
paper taped to my wall: spill is everywhere.
When I write, gold embers sink into my
hands. And I never thought to ask– those bands?
Are they dust or sunset?
Every time I trace the letters with my
tongue, the words turn into clouds.
Photo by David Wiederholt