This Keeps Happening

by Cheryl Snell

I’m in the garden in my mother’s fringed shawl, sifting through the soil on the back of dreams that lag behind me here. The dark is never dark enough, and I curse the gloom for wavering. Kneeling before a shudder of petals touched by the color of abandonment, I ride a stem riddled with sharp stars that wound my thumb. Because there is no one here to say Don’t, I gather the smooth buds to my face. Since there is no one, I kiss them open above the tangled roots left in the leaf mulch floor. One blackbird strews salt across the heavens.

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Cheryl Snell likes to observe both the obscure and the absurd.