little girl with pigtails and spaghetti-stained-shirt,
father’s knees and words unheard under bubbled laughter,
she basked in warm words and frosted yogurt,
living in the heart of life without knowing shadows.
now love is everything; i desired everything but still wait:
desiring your love is the shadow theater on the cave wall.
i let go of the embers and take my first breath,
neck stiff as i have never looked around before;
the world offers tender kisses in a way that
makes me feel the cracks in my heart as healing pours in–
like old wineskins break with new wine, so in much the same, i–
i am everything past, forever held in the way that
i will forever hold the tangible and intangible letters life writes me.
i can’t hold everything forever, but i hold the claw marks you left as you slipped away.
oh–for life to return and hold me in calloused hands,
rough skin on the back of my neck in a hug:
it makes me remember i am broken glass rearranged above cathedral altars.
i think i have found what love is: when–
i laugh at a text and joy hangs in my mind like fogged breath in fall,
crystallized droplets blowing bubbled rainbows at the walls.
when i think of singing banana pancakes in the car and my
blood seems to ripple at who we used to be.
when i first saw her eyes and knew her through lifetimes,
before i saw her layers, knowing every whisper intimately.
when the vultures on the roof sang an
amalgamation of every undefined longing.
i scream on my knees like my throat may shred from the volume,
“life, if you come as lover or executioner, come swiftly!”
i live off the mountain’s lifeblood and the rain’s soothing air–
the thunder nectar to my brokenness and the waterfall washing the hurt away.

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By Emily Kledzik

Emily (she/her) is an undergraduate student studying Creative Writing. She is a woman in Appalachia devoted to understanding humanity. Her writing pays tribute to the people around her, the divinity and slight humanity she sees within her surrounding nature, and the great writers that come before her. She can be found on instagram at the handle emilykledzik.