Today's poem is by Anthony Thomas Lombardi

relapse dream
       

i'm dripping cherries onto the carpet & for a minute i'm jealous of my own knuckles & before
i know it there's mounds of stale cake flattening into floorboards & bees fill the room & i tell
myself i'm at peace with this o!ering at least there's cake & no one has to wait until i'm done
crying to eat it & then the bees fill my mouth & my tongue fattens like it's got someplace to
be & there goes eating cake & how are these sacrificial insects supposed to store honey for
the winter & won't the hive miss them & won't i miss them & when i open my mouth their
wings are beautiful dressed with oils & blisters & my lips swell with the sliver of another dying
thing & i begin to consider the instinct required to accept your undoing no matter how fatal
this staying might be & where do i even get the gall to welcome the kind of violence that
greeted greater men just once before they woke up as ghosts & when will i understand the
zinnias as merely a peace o!ering from a less forgiving god & don't they rely on the same
ecosystem as the bees & don't i rely on the same ecosystem as the bees & don't i see the
lesson here & how many men need to sigh boy, them wings ain't meant to last before i fold
up my prayers & tuck them in my cheek & when will i be emptied by what a night doesn't
promise instead of what it does & when will these wings unfurl however brief & prove that my
shoulders are built for more than breaking falls & if all the cake is gone i said help yourselves
at least there's blooms of honey right here in my mouth & how many bees need to die

Copyright © 2025 Anthony Thomas Lombardi All rights reserved
from murmurations
YesYes Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission