In my next life I want to be a meadow
with her galaxy of mountain asters. To be the hum and thrum
of tiny flutters, where the brown belted bumble bee marries
the yellow cuck-coo. I want copper blues, grasshoppers
playing hopscotch between spiked lupins, morning mists
spreading over all the noise
you lay at my daybreak, and the sweet juice blueberrying
your fingertips. I want to be
not human—not you, not me—but this
wash of sound, bowl full of sighs made of thistle of fireweed
of low flung phlox. All the star-strewn pulses of green, all the rise
and fall. A church of avalanche lilies
tufted by sky; the tubers and worms winding their way
through whatever darkness is left of these lives.
And we both know there will be darkness.
For you, I will be pine chipmunk making a small commotion
in the green; all the insects flying
on their flying trapeze—wing after wing after wing. My love,
lay here. Let the hungry ghosts seep
into the earth below. I will make them a proper funeral,
float you beneath the sly dragonfly, kiss
your cheeks with dew and bear grasses. Birdsong for a tongue,
lifted by the wind into a primordial orchestra
of wildness. And will this be enough? You ask.
Yes, finally, I think, it will be enough.
–
Anya Kirshbaum is a bi/queer poet from Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2025, Mississippi Review, Crannóg, Solstice Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Orison Spiritual Literature Prize, was nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and was the recipient of the Banyan Poetry Prize.