We Were Never Here
- We Were Never Here
A short tree with exalted branchesstretched its canopy in all directionslike an ambitious captain.
Overripe melons hung like lanternsinches above a dust-whorled ground.We walked through a field with no moon—
pitched as a shadow’s center savebillions of stars buttoning the night sky.We found rows of peppers and corn
standing like sentinels among tentsof climbing peas, walls of cucumbersand lines of wild carrot tails.
We found the angels rumored to lifteach plant a little further toward its end.As we crushed garnet melon flesh
into sweet nectar, juice rivered from our lips.Under the light of an absent moon,we feasted until our tongues burned
numb with sugar. Then the garden adoptedus, by which I mean the four cornersof our feet shot roots into the earth.
Dear reader, there was nothing we could dobut grow as our arms vined forever north,our fingers vied for stars, and our earth-bound
bodies burst into bloom. [End Page 144]
Catherine Prescott is the author of the chapbook The Living Ruin (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, MiPOesias and Poetry East.
