I drape my thoughts across the folds
of decades past and arrived, point my long
spindled fingers like a dial at the verdancy
of your lawn. The creeping moon is sallow
and fat, her fish eye gapes through the fringe.
The solemn greys hold invisible stories
just begging to be written,
their pale spines turned and hidden
but I will guide your hand to them, if you ask.
I can tell you about their iridescent pulses,
and the pearly spectrum of color around the veil
below the slump of my shoulders.
You would not hear me if I whispered
immutable truths that brush past your ears
and fall limp to the ground.
I feel the breeze of your love sway me.
I stand and watch you tend your small garden
with the delicate hands of an artist.
Please understand: There will never come a time
when you regret saying “I love you.”
Say it the way you identify with the word of your name.
Say it as casually as you stroke the shudder of my leaves.
No matter that I stand calm and unrustled.
Tell me anyway.
– poem by Sara Dallmayr
I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I attended Western Michigan University and received a BA in English/creative writing/poetry. I’ve worked a variety of jobs including park ranger, administrative assistant at a community development nonprofit, library substitute, professional petsitter, and post office rural mail carrier, the last of which is possibly the strangest thing I have ever done for money. I hope to attend graduate school for creative writing in the next couple of years.