Blooming

What are you devoted to?
Let me tell you it isn’t pain.
It’s something close to beauty,
but not quite.
It’s not the color of the flower—
	but the way the flower sings color across the sky.

Tell me, what would you risk it all for?
I’ll tell you it isn’t glory.
It isn’t dignity but something close.
This right to pleasure. This right to life.
This right to belong to a web greater 
	than your hands can make.

There.
This magic called blooming.
There rests my devotion.






Geneva Evie Toland



Geneva Evie Toland (she/her) is a writer, farmer, naturalist, and educator residing on the ancestral lands of the Báxoje people (Ames, Iowa). She is currently a student and the Pearl Hogrefe fellow in Iowa State University's MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment. Her work has been published in the Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Canary Literary Magazine, and the We'Moon 2023 Collection. When not at her desk, Geneva can be found looking for birds and wildflowers, playing her guitar, or in her robe watching New Girl.