- Leaving Pittsburgh in June
The petal burns. Pollen leaves a slant of gold, my wrist heats up with rash.
It tore up my arm. When I left you
brought flowers to the airport. I took all the yellow, pressed them to my forearm until it shook, daffodil bruise flushing near my elbow.
I thinned the pale skin into a leaf cracking with a low cry. Every night after
I left I shook my body into sleeping. How far my arms could reach in their transparence, my sleep strained with vibration:
you stand in a terminal of stems I have cut all at once.
No — I am a stem and I lay around you in piles. You don’t go so I stay
outstretched in a net with no blossoms. [End Page 42]
Kelly Forsythe is currently living and writing in Chicago, where she works with Wave Books long-distance and as a freelance consultant for The Poetry Foundation. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, and elimae.