by Jade Riordan
(Content warning: death)
The world is a berry in the mouth
of night. An understanding
of the colour blue. Here, we plant corn-
flower seeds in rich earth. Here, we play
hide-and-seek with sickness and death.
My great-grandmother smoked her whole life
and died of lung cancer. She did push-ups
daily until she could no longer exercise.
How endearingly, terribly human it is to be
a contradiction. On the drive south
to her funeral, a dragonfly flew through the open
backseat window and landed, fragile and iridescent
as the origins of trust, on my hand.
This was the second time I learned the word awe;
we first became acquainted when I was small
and my parents brought my newborn sister home
from the hospital. Later between towns, where
endless sky was the only promise kept, the wind
caught the paper map we were navigating by
and carried it out the car’s open window.
Destination without a destined path:
birth and death and life
guided by the innate compass of wonder.
How common, how gentle this invitation to grief.
I pluck the blueberry–the whole delicious,
delicate world–from my mouth and smear it
across this page, a second attempt
at the morning sky.
JADE RIORDAN is a poet from the land of the midnight sun. Her poetry has appeared in Arc, Augur Magazine, CV2, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, Room, and elsewhere. When not writing, she can be found daydreaming about fireflies as living compasses.
Blueberry was edited by Terese Mason Pierre. It can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 8.3.
