One morning, I found two
Varied Thrush dead, laying side by side
outside the greenhouse.
It was as if they dived into love and it killed them.
That glass house, was the only place that
felt like home to you.
I’d watch you through the window tenderly
bed broken leaves of succulents into pots
the size of your thumbs.
I believed in signs, warnings of things to come.
At its door overnight sprouted
translucent Indian Pipes.
They rose out of the crumbly soil
like alien question marks or ruffled
ended shepherds staffs.
It was as if they asked, do you know who I am,
will you love me like you loved the rose or lily,
will you pick me, vase me,
or will you discard me wary that
I may poison you
with my strange ways.
One night you came through the door
with a waltz playing on your phone.
You placed it on the coffee table,
taking me up into your arms,
dancing me around the living room
and time felt infinite, this yes, this.
Later you stood at the foot of the bed
and announced like a school boy
that you wanted to sing a song for me.
When you did, a thousand pieces of my heart
gathered together for the first time in my life,
stirring you into my forever.
Sometimes at night, I still want your back
your hip, freckled shoulders, sandy colored skin,
the way you’d say ‘tuck in tight’
and I’d place my face into the warmth
between your shoulder blades wondering
if you were starting to turn
away, if you had met her, someone better,
if you were dreaming of her younger landscape
not the old desert of me.
I was a child in a fairy tale believing if you left
and came back, left and came back then you’d realize
I was the best and that you were for me and I for you.
You told me the first time you saw
my photo you fell in love
with my sadness.
When you loved me all my sadness disappeared.
When you would leave me it returned.
How many times did you create my sadness
to love me again? I did not count.
I only know you finally found someone else
who’s sadness was more beautiful than mine.
J.V. Foerster is a three-time Pushcart nominated poet. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines including Cirque, Amethyst Review, Quartet, The Field Guide Magazine, The Bluebird Word, The Fiery Scribe, Eclectica, Furrow edition from Green Ink Press, Loch Raven Review, Agnieszka’s Dowry, Midnight Mind, Premiere Generation Ink, Fickle Muse, Oak Bend Review, Fox Chase Review, to name just a few. She has work in Orchard Lea Anthology, and in a Rosemont College Anthology. She was a finalist in an Oprelle Poetry Contest and received a First Honorable mention in the Oregon Poetry Association Members Only contest. She has a book, “Holy Mess of a Girl” forthcoming from Kelsay Books. J.V. is also a published painter and photographer. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.
