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janie⁷ @edensope.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

earlier today i received in the mail, the second publication where my third poem was published, so here i take a bow 🙂‍↕️

A Poem Titled ‘Softcore Hanahaki.’
It reads:

It was early spring when we sat at the mouth of your pool. toes dipping into the cold water while we waited for it to get warm enough to swim in summer could not come fast enough. the watery sun dripped dark-golden ichor onts our bodies,

glistening like sweat, something humming and lazy and intangible. While the hazy light cast over the new blooms of marigolds and roses and wildflowers preening in the unruly brambles of your forgotten garden, I was talking about picking you flowers, and you were asking me about religion.

The moment hung heavy with the magic of naivete and a perceived romance.

What do you make of the story of Naomi and Ruth?" you asked. The question felt sudden and I didn't have an answer. Was it loyalty or love?' you mused.

I didn't think often about the story or god, and I said so. Loyalty or love? It could have been both, in hindsight. It may have been melancholy as well.

The water was In the summer, you were gone and there was no one to go swimming with. finally warm enough, but I sat by myself on the tiled ground and watched the aquamarine ripples. Finally summer and there was no one to debate flowers and god, so I sat until the heat grew unbearable until I'd breathed in the marigolds and roses so much I could feel their spores rattling in my chest.

I wrote a letter to melancholy and called it loyalty- 'It had to be loyalty, I say out loud to nobody, In between the ache taking root in my chest and the certainty

that you wanted me to pick one of the two. There can be no love without loyalty, no loyalty without love, I should have said

By autumn, the rain comes and floods the pool in your backyard, washes away the vibrance of the flowers in your garden.

I wanted to ask if you'd let me put a crown of roses in your hair. but you were asking me about god and Ruth and Naomi instead I should have said 'where you go I will go,

but now there's nothing left except the smell of wet and the roots and vines clogging my throat.

In the winter, I wrote a letter to melancholy and called it love.

We couldn't wait for the heat of summer once, now it has come and gone and I can only stare at the reflection in your frozen pool In my dreams, we dip our toes into the water and our fingers ignite with sparks where they brush against each other.

I wrote a letter to you and it went something along the lines of, Dear melancholy, I loved you as loud as thunder greets the sky, but I never seemed to be beard. Dear loyalty, I would have gone wherever you led'

It will be spring again soon, and in my dreams you are next to me- the flowers bloom to life in my chest and I hack up a cough, spitting out red and gold ichor. In my dreams, I pick up the bloody petals and weave you a crown of roses and marigolds

while you lay in my lap and tell me how much you love them.