Emily Castellon

04/19/23

The news of your death
reached me as I was watering
the dove orchid you gifted me
on our last anniversary.
It withered away between the first/last
time we kissed and the final
birthday I spent alone.
The perspiration of dead leaves
crunched gruesomely
under my clenched fingers.
I notice absently the coral pink
you loved painting my nails
with. I coated my ragged nailbeds
with it in pathetic desperation two nights ago, trying
and failing to feel some form of you.
A birthday present I never gave
you is collecting dust
in the back of my closet,
under solidified memories
I could never throw away.
You would’ve liked it, the sunset I painted your smile in.
My chest feels like it, the burning
of a thousand sunsets,
the ones I never got to share with you.

Emily Castellon is a senior at Bonita Springs High School. She is currently dual-enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University. She loves all types of poetry but her favorite form is prose poetry.