I will die in a beautiful place
and it has taught me
The value of keeping my eyes wide
My palms up
The window open to our common breath
It has taught me
To love his angles like mountains and his skin like dirt
For he is nothing but beautiful places
As he lays himself down on our bed
And becomes a horizon
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Some new god
Has planted seeds in my yard,
Cross-cultured
with those from the botanical garden across town
And now my grass is peppered with mixed-race petals,
Falling slowly
Having all lost grip
Of their common branch
Evolution told us
we are all one and different
thrusted sunward from a lace of root-tips,
our origins,
Filling the gaps with our languages
That will die word by word as we spit over fences
And into neighbors’ gardens
This is the new flora of north America –
Our fruit all fuzzed with spores
striving for the cell walls of skin,
Bruised with false sunlight after dark,
Clinging thin to the ridges of our fingertips
but meanwhile,
on the patio
The ice cubes slowly melt
Next to steaks searing on the grill
And, charred,
Our petals writhe together
-Laura Thorne
