On Saturdays, I Drive Home Barefoot and Hope for Rain
I pose for oil portraits, with absence of paints aside,
and measure my weight in quick wit and Spanish moss.
I breathe underwater like I learned to do at seven
after fleeing from the flames on my fathers left arm.
I blow kisses at strangers,
marvel at the horrid marbling of unfabricated memory.
I imagine myself as crosswinds between amber grasses;
as a slow, sweet smoke that smiles its way through the valley.
I hug the orchidbreath child in the lake,
because she looks like me with longer hair.
I’m all too familiar with rage,
I stomach the silty aftermath, the fallout, the mess.
Lili Gourley is a SUNY Geneseo graduate with a bachelor’s in creative writing. She works as a Submissions Coordinator for a small but mighty press. She has previous publications in Gandy Dancer and Iris Magazine.