STURGEON BLUE

Sturgeon. A fish to set down a season. Late summer.
A lingering hot heat. It never cools in the night anymore.

Your chest, a full yellow rose, is the garden bed. Rest for a moment.

The sturgeon and the midnight sky are a wash of ink impossible to read. Insouciant matriarchs.
Above our head, a blue moon is cooking around
with a pilot light that guides to some pinpoint unknown.

I can smell your hair on my pillow.
A fold of you.
The folds crease in this space with papery fragility. They will disintegrate in water.

It’s a gentle pain. Bumping an old bruise.
“Your ache,” I’ll call it.

We had to drop it like a hot spoon. We had to drop it like dribbling a basketball. Like a vase that smashes. Like a baseball bat. Like a cell phone.

In that flash before it hits the ground, we lived.

Blackberries ripen in August to a fermenty vinegar.
The construction sign reads “sidewalk closed.”

I’m tempted by the corruption of this knowing that right now we have our own elements to swallow. Our own stars to run toward.

The flock flies. I have to go and so do you.

Tala Wilder, 34, is from Portland, OR. She works as a bartender and hosts a podcast called Poetry as Meditation.