Mary Simmons
Instinct
When I say fate, what I mean is
there is a river slumbering in me, and together
we could go down to the rockbed, and pick
the flattest stone, and skip it downstream.
I was never taught how to love except by watching
lilies-of-the valley bud and bloom and die and
bud, again. I don’t know if I’ve ever dreamed
so much as walked the nightingale’s path each night.
Cricketsong pours into me, until it pulses at my wrists,
crying for switchgrass. You trace circles
at the base of my thumb like we have nothing but time.
What if the next life is just loving you in technicolor?
I don’t know anymore who I inherited this body from,
but I know your touch on my arm doesn’t feel so much familiar
as ingrained, a knowing I was born with.
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Mary Simmons is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is a poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University, where she is the managing editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in, or forthcoming from, One Art, Moon City Review, Yalobusha Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, and others.