No one really knows the face
behind the garden gates, but
she smiles when the sun holds
her gaze. Eyes of ancient wonder
sing notes of blue upon the garden.
And when the leaves of fall crown her
gold, she holds it like it’s the last
she’ll ever know. Colors die,
cold creeps in, fades her into stone.
The flowers and sun betray her light.
She becomes invisible again.
She jumped, but the air didn’t care,
and the clouds never reached down,
just sighed, and looked away. And she
tumbled, arms flailing, hair wound
across her motionless face. But
the ground didn’t care, so it never
flinched when she hit, or cried out in
sorry, or caught her less broken.
The ground ignored her fall, her splayed
limbs and all the cracks that bled invisible.
Time didn’t care that she was frozen,
so she became the fall. No one noticed.
Talking to the Clouds 