"He Told Us The Day The World Ended, Clouds Would Throb Desert Orange" by Candace Hartsuyker from GONE LAWN

He Told Us The Day The World Ended, Clouds Would Throb Desert Orange

He told us the day the world ended, the clouds would throb desert orange, and frogs would fall from the sky, distended bellies splattering open like broken water balloons, but he was wrong, what happened was we wore crowns of daisy chains in our hair, the stalks broken and dripping from where earlier we'd tasted them with our tongues, thinking they'd taste like honey while instead they were sticky with pollen and not as sweet as we'd expected, but we were relishing our freedom, our chance to get away from Him, the man who had captured us for days week months maybe years, the man who told us that he would be our God, and so around this field of dandelions, these flowers that seemed to us not ordinary weeds but something more, we made ourselves queens, beholden to no one, but still our bare feet wet with grass clippings, our crosses cold and clinking against the space between our breasts, we remembered how we'd knelt on hard floors, callused knees bleeding, scrubbing with our brushes, the stinging pain of hard labor and our skin an open wound, but still we stayed because we trusted him, were deluded enough to believe that this was proof of His love.

Copyright © 2025 Candace Hartsuyker All rights reserved
from Gone Lawn
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

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