Poem "Lily" by Nithya Swaminathan (Teen Poet Laureate)

Lily

Nithya Swaminathan

 

She smiles up at me

A peach stone

warm brown, gleaming

Sticky juice pooled in her dimples

Begging to be licked clean

 

Her thumb wedges

against a tapioca pearl tooth

Wiggling north and south and too far south, and

Ouch!

One pops right out

Crackling against the asphalt like rock candy

Her grin grows wider and wider

to the river rhythm of blood down her chin

It’s a peculiar sight,

Her canyon smile stained red

Giggling

Happy in pain’s portrait

 

I can’t control Lily

Each ribbon looped around her wrist frays

Coarse twine around her ankles snaps

like elastic

 

She lives like the wind

Flowing, rapid, running and running

Falling down, carried up

My feet are stagnant

Tethered to the playground

Leaning into her draft

She’s the wind

Breathless, alive

 

I feel her howls inside my bones

Soundless, but I understand

Her eyes are dewy like the hills

Blinking at my hollow words, my

haphazard spanish

I feel her press against my side

¡Ven conmigo! She flits away

I spin and spin, a gyroscope

But she’s gone

Rustling with a million oak leaves