Trifolium
- May 18, 2022
- 2 min read
by Ren Gay
I pulled up each blade of grass by the roots from this manicured lawn and realized there was nothing except cigarette butts and wilted four-leaf clovers.
Nearby mud daubers build hives from crumbled asphalt, trip the bicyclist and take the skin from her knees as payment.
Recognize this untamed lawn for what it is -- the earth taking back its own name -- but know this all comes at the cost of never truly being home.
Our front yard reforms as a rippling lake and I am dozen kinds of oil that coat me in refusal to drop beneath, no matter how many stones I lace my pockets with.
My head ducks under and only then can I imagine Virginia Woolf in her final moments Did she suffer? Or did she half-smile upon feeling a lack of resistance for the first time?
The shimmer of heated air fills the entire sky and we are choking on its fullness. Rather than let the city gorge itself on my blood, I hang inverted on a butcher’s hook I bleed myself dry, flex my atrophied muscles to pump them so full the bloodsuckers feeding upon me burst.
If I fall to pieces may they be razor edged. May it be into a trail of irresistible candied sweets picked up by the only ones left with sugar on their tongues.
Ren Gay is a lesbian, autistic poet and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart prize. She is the author of the micro-chap The Hymenopterans (Ghost City Press 2021). Their work has appeared in journals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, The Laurel Review, Qu Literary, Gramma Poetry, FreezeRay Poetry, Persephone’s Daughters, and others. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota with her two cats.
