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.