Again

I stand in a dying field watching
a glitter fall of bird wings

Every change of season I find myself
where flowers wilted. It’s growing old

visits, revisits, holding hurt
I tell my husband I’ve buried.

My therapist said an affair takes
seven years to exit a body

uncurl our fingers from fists,
and I would forget the urge

to run, dig up every flower bed, light
every house on fire and burn.

I worry my marriage is a fire poppy
and I the arsonist. I kill

the countryside just to see
the buds bloom.


Bailey Quinn (she/her) is a PhD student at Oklahoma State University, focusing on visual and material poetics. Her work explores the intersections of mental health, motherhood, sexuality, environment, and gender with a haunting, folkloric twist. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, SoFloPoJo, West Trade Review, and Bat City Review, among others.

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