Aubade for a non-Existent child / wanda deglane

i am full of you.

i am full of you.

no longer quietly burning, but now a self-contained      explosion

            wanting to consume the flamed            edges of my world.

think bursting.             think of lemons, fallen to the forgotten earth in july,

            their skin cracking and             bleeding            soft and sour.

oh god, how i love you.            i love you like the sweet-sour

punching blood of pomegranates.                     i love you

like the colors              i don’t yet have names for.

i love you so much,      i need

                        to destroy you.                        

my silence

blooms screaming                     like a bruise beneath my chest.

            my begging howls                     find their way out

when the city is drained of color,                     early dawn,

                        and only the tired highways                  hear me,

their legs crumbling beneath them.                   people perish.

i look at my reflection                         for comfort, all ghostly yellow             and

                        violent blue,                 but she weeps and tells me,

i’m terrified.                

my sweet moon offering.         my tiny shadow.

            my flattened juniper, squished like veins,                      crushed like lungs.

my silver and beaming orange.                         my persephone,

                        come to steal back the cold.

i pray the hollow of my organs                        squeezes the barely-formed life

            out of you.       the most painless                     of bloodbaths.

i pray you die so quick, you never get to reach out

                        your new fingers           and find a home in my vermillion.

            that you may only know life                as this microscopic, blurry seed.

that you never drink of this urban honey,                    this smog and desperation.

                                    that you never have to cry out             in a world

            that slowly makes a feast of you.         that you may never

receive             the only gifts i have left for you:                     raw, unrefined terror,

                                    and the phantoms of dreams.

that you may never have to know                    your grandfather’s fists,

                                                or your mother’s hesitations.

my rose, my apricot,                there is only one thing i know:

                        everything i touch begs for life.

i pray i never live to touch you. 

Wanda Deglane is a night-blooming desert flower from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology and family & human development. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Former Cactus, among other lovely places. Wanda self published her first poetry book, Rainlily, in 2018.