2 POEMS FROM JULIET ❋ Sarah Xerta

I

On the first day of spring all the flowers
are still waiting to be born, hanging out around the bones
that used to be bodies, that used to hold
other bodies inside them. In my head there are always
a dozen other heads, a skull stuffed with lilacs, a mouth that won’t stop drooling, a soldier
whose body looks like it’s been turned inside out because God
doesn’t have his own body to play with.
Or something like that. It’s true, I’m starting
to question some things. Like, how many piles
of bones is too many? How many beautiful people
weren’t born today? But still, you’re right, that sun.
Still I get out of bed and say magic
because there are trees outside my window
and somehow that means you and I
get to keep on breathing here together for a while.

II

It’s the thirteenth day of spring and all the snow
is dirtier than it was yesterday. My teeth
are one day older and the sky
has another thousand molecules of cancer moving through it,
but my eyes have been dry,
and that feels really nice, in bed eating Oreos
like a normal person, my feet getting warm as my brain
softens and slips away from itself
like a moon, a sailboat, all the pretty things
we don’t know how to hold.
You asked me for a letter
and I sent you a star-shaped piece of my tongue.
You asked me for a letter
and this isn’t it. I’m sorry. I get so busy
thinking about you that I forget
to think about you. I imagine my insides
like a whole sea of sailboats
murmuring to each other in the dark,
and I wonder how many secrets exist on the Earth at any given moment,
what breed of flowers
will dig their roots into our graves, what shade of gold
is your breath when you dream?
You make me want to make stamps out of morning,
seal every envelope with a moan.
How many fibers of the universe have we given birth to?
Like this I am always wading through an orchestra, my hips
always brushing against some sort of glass, all these breakable
thoughts about God, the sun
in April, the sound you make when you look at me and don’t make any sound.