You smell like love, sleep like love, old
love that ghosts away and back, dies
or doesn’t like camellias in Savannah
February. It’s old dull rain love in the
sloshing gutters or painted on my
windshield. It’s a block away from you
and your angel hair pasta, full belly first
floor sleep next to humming AC while
my car was rifled through and I had
no idea. It smells like crumbly moss and beer
between bricks and looks flat and magic
like the buildings on the river, like it’s out
of a book. It flies like white birds
across bog against city lights that turn
purple when we press out backs into
sand… like it will swallow us, bring us
down and down. Oh. It feels like earth
wrapped around my thighs and wrists.
And it’s beautiful—what a warm
Halloween it will be in such sunny
dirt, with the paper mill fuming off the
city’s edge and your love mid-air like sunset
blackbirds diving off the boarded church.
Madeline Marks
Poetry
BFA Writing 2024
Wallingford, Pennsylvania
