Sarah Fawn Montgomery

Deadheading

You argue the blooms still
alive when we both see
brittle ghosts hovering

over twisted roots,
translucent petals pink
as the time wine

stained our lips, bed
an excuse to day
dream a future we

both wanted, white fence
picketing the yard,
but the barbed wire

is rusted, threatening
to topple from vines
that wind through time

like the narrative
where you wanted
me enough to want

a child but nothing
new will grow
I say to your mouth—

set firm as horizon—
unless you sever
what has already died

after such glorious
color, so I cut
off the heads, careful

to save the seeds
for some other summer.

Fossil

Unfreeze me from amber and find
the ways I tried to survive the years

and pressure, the roof always threatening
to cave in, lava flow and how

I scuttled while tar was rising, dark
tide all around, sun ash-clotted

the way lovers froze at Vesuvius,
limbs grasping towards what was

already gone. I am forever reaching
for the you who still exists, breathing

even though the earth is hotter, the seas
rising over the homes of those too poor

to flee, the last glacier racing
polar bears to be the first to disappear

like how doctors predict you will be dead
before the grey parrot or every tortoise

whose name no one can remember,
the way I struggle to recall a time before

you were nearly motionless, yellowed
with sick, before I froze, dug my claws

into the moment to capture it, held
still by the threat of a world

without you, where I am caught
between survival and surrender.

Permafrost

Our permafrost is melting,
exposing the bedrock we

tried so hard to freeze,
pretend into forever

ago and never again,
betrayal best buried

far from civilization, forgotten
like the times you left

me stranded at airports on return
flights home and searching

empty terminals only to discover
my own reflection staring back,

breath fogging up glass
windows and now we know

what arctic explorers found
when glaciers retreated from the ground,

something never meant to soften,
the kind of thaw that leaves

us exposed to all the ills
we’ve only yet to imagine,

viruses ancient like the sound
of slamming doors or the shelf

of ice cracking in two,
drifting cold and unaware, further

apart in the unrelenting dark.