come.
there’s something i want to show you, helena. just a bit farther will do. past the fence where those white trumpet flowers have started to bloom and weave into each other like lovers’ hands. where spring melds into summer like pigments of a watercolor gradient syncretizing.
come.
ma will bid you good morning and you will wave back with a smile on your face, grateful for that sacred, irreprehensible thing known
as life, evident by the warm sloshing of a heart and tangibility of a voice. notice the glint in her eyes when you reciprocate her awareness. in her eyes you are still an infant, weeds hip height, trudging in her too-big linen frock.
look.
no time for dwelling. push on or we’ll miss it. trail the blur of a hummingbird’s flight batting like a painted fan wafting closer flowery conversation.
look.
how the sun bathes the goosebumps on your skin and leaves you spellbound.
here we are, helena.
it’s not a thing you can hold, nor a flower you can nip with your hands and save in tempered glass; it’s a lingering. not bliss, not melancholy. stillness. like the atmosphere outside your body matches what’s swirling inside you– a diorama of nature, everything and everyone you feel affection for. all that stands between and before you cannot be taken from you.
here we are, helena.
now you know, my last sunday morning, i heard the epilogue was dawning and kissed it. my daughter, wading in tallgrass, adoring her child. this was my sign. your ma will ask me one day, and you will be the answer.
Anna Feng is a student at Del Norte High School in San Diego, California. She is a California Arts Scholar and Iowa Young Writers Workshop alumni. Her work has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest, and appears in The Lumiere Review and Dishsoap Quarterly.