violet cornflower

By Brooke Miller

Art by Ashley Yu

What if I told you I didn't want to be held again? 

The girl I was six months ago in August one month ago in January would look at her hands and see  a phantom curl of her fingers remembering the mold of an empty lover’s tattooed bicep 

I am untouched yet so softly caressed with the whisper of a younger me 

Chanting my name like an anthem 

A mother of my same hair eyes like for sitting on her ankles at the dinner table

dislike for hearty meals is holding my young hands and waving me off to dreamland 

I want her embrace  I find it anew in a single duvet   that only I have touched 

You know, she told me Berlin was not for me

I told myself the same 

 There is a comfort in the way I wrap my arms around my torso at night

and dance with my eyes closed and book last minute tickets to the unknown spaces younger me said she wanted to visit 

I'm writing only in pen these days

something permanent, documentative, smudge-like to mark my path

i boarded a flight to the city that wasn't for me

I’m in an industrial utopia that makes me jump under abandoned traffic lights

I walk on cobblestone with more power than before 

I am planting the seeds of pomegranate my mother spoon fed me into this 

dry soil  and they are blooming in the dead of winter 

I am swallowing up experiences with no dollar signs and too many brunches and a few dates here and there until one flies back to Berlin 

this sounds familiar, old lover. 

this sounds familiar, mother. 

I am letting myself be  violet cornflower and bleeding fruit.