Heartache Child

by Brielle Kroner

She picks sunny daffodils,
and where each stem meets her
clasped fingers, the flowers on the
perimeter of the bouquet     perforate and
droop.

A girl never minding a violent harvest
             if she can keep the severed bodies
                         in a glass jar                each year.

She is the weeping willow, living a
low-hanging life, 

                       a tree that counts calendar days,
                                   a perennial child.

She laps burning water
from a black, snaking hose
at the side of the house

 and the liquid fades first to nothing
                          (that invisible temperature)
then suddenly to a bright, groundwater cold
that hits her bare toes and shatters.

She walks a gravel drive,
welcoming the sting where shards of stone
           pierce the soles of her feet —
                                                                        a heartache

(a foot-ache) child

                           a girl longing to
                                      be born

               more.

Brielle Kroner is an M.A. and M.F.A. candidate for English and poetry at Arcadia university. They are a poet and nonfiction writer particularly enjoying the merging of and spaces between the two genres. They live outside Philadelphia with their partner and their cat.