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"cakey" by Prachi Valechha

You, Earth by Koss

wanted you to stay      I would keep you      I wanted to keep you      tethered to the world      the earth
would keep you      the sun would warm your skin      the things we could count on:      earth      sun
water      winter      we could become our own perennials      through nurturing      together farmers
sowing seeds      a watering      all things green      you planted      that spring      reduced the weeds      for
future seasons      that might include me      you led me through      gardens      the plots of others
around you      unseen      buried      earth      so I too dreamed      dreamed underground water      River
Styx      shamans’ swimming visions      beasts      through fall’s musty leaf-strewn spillways      tiny
icebergs      lucid zinc death sheets      dreamed weeping sunflowers      blackened stars      magpies falling
dead from trees      what we survived      and greens      tufts of sprawling lettuce      strangeness of
strawberries      fiery tomatoes with orange bursting veins      cascading chains of freckled squash
fragrant heaps of herbs      those normal growing things      not meant to be      as sleep groans into wake
your feet      raven-stained from dirt      held in my hands      anointed with lavender      coarse      peeling
your loved feet I’d kiss ‘til the sun bled noon      before the moon died      and between      before you
weeded yourself by the roots      detached from stem      shed skin      a cruel garden untangled      my
mandrake      another singed field      your eyes burned      in cliffs      as Saturn feigns      his aureole of
light


Koss is a queer writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. She has work in Diode Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, What Rough Beast, Five Points / Spoon River Review (forthcoming) and others. She also has a hybrid book due out in early 2021 by Negative Capability Press and work in the forthcoming Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology. Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969, Instagram @koss_singular, and her website: https://koss-works.com.

Prachi Valechha is a freelance cartoonist and animator from India. Valechha loves to make Toons and Toons for Tunes.
You can find more of their work at: instagram.com/rainbowteeth
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© 2022 Up the Staircase Quarterly
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