Honeyed

Issue 8 Editor’s Prize for Poetry

I told my therapist about On the Road
and how you remind me of a young Kerouac
with softer eyes. 

 I told her how I went stargazing in May
and as I lay there in a dark blanket of cold grass,
I wanted to reach up and cup
the cosmos in a mason jar
just so you could use it as a nightlight
on your bedside table.  

I think when you kissed me last week,
you must’ve torn my jaw
clean off the hinges
because suddenly every syllable feels
like a conga line of sugar ants
who’ve just spotted apple pie
on a windowsill, and – 

In my throat is a beehive.
It makes my lips drip with honey
and your name tastes like nectar
against my tongue. Sweetness – 

 you pluck the barb
out of my earthly existence
and with that, I come undone.