By Annalise Watkins

I am the poetry I have not written;
postmark of my being; my love, my hate, my face.
Words were to me both my prayer and my place.
Beating soul and breathing blood that is I,
life lived between months; December and July.
August arrives with rust and flower of desire grows in my fields,
it persists dressed in nothing but light’s faltering shields.
There are a thousand butterflies in my walls,
they wither like magnolias every time summer falls,
They will return by summers rise again like a vow,
and I still feel them even now.
The moon is revealing itself to me at last,
with the words of which I had long asked.
Like a pearl to my equally half-naked heart,
I dance under the stars drunk on their hurt.
Haunted by the silences made for I,
I lie on cold ground and preach to the sky.
Night-born beauty I am,
dressed in the dark and it’s damn.
A graveyard in my mouth that grips,
caskets filled by words that died on my lips.
Dreams I cannot remember; waived,
were reality that I craved-
Another December spent that tasted of ashes,
which cover me now and then in flashes.
Feel the shadows dance on my skin,
how sweetly I melt in my sin-
and if yearning has a shape on this earth,
it would be me; from my birth.

Annalise is a young writer with a passion for critical thought and writing. She crafts stories and essays that explore identity, society, and human nature while her interest in politics, psychology, environmental issues and philosophy fuels the emotion that can be found in her writing.