In a warm haze of hard seltzer
And cold takeout I snap a picture of Sol—
only four and plucking A’s and G’s
on a four-year-old-boy-sized cello—
and his mother holding the sheet music.
Cold lightless sky of new moon in Aquarius
watches us through the bay window.
I send the picture to Jake and say I want one.
A cello? he asks. No, a Sol. Because I know
I can’t say a baby. A son. Because I know
the winter that wears my bones like a wedding dress
will never thaw. Me too, he says. Someday. Me too.
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Hayley Bowen (she/her) is a poet, an avid craft beer enthusiast, an amateur painter, and a terrible knitter. Her work has appeared in Scythe Magazine, Sylvia Magazine, Dunes Review, and elsewhere. Although she has spent portions of her life in the Sonoran Desert of Southern California, the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, she has decided that “home” is wherever she happens to be at the moment. She currently resides in an attic in Upstate New York where she is an MFA candidate in creative writing poetry at Syracuse University.
Latest posts by Hayley Bowen (see all)
- Winter in New York - 31st January 2022
- Starling Heart - 30th April 2021
- An Orchard of Her Own - 9th September 2020