Between Seasons by Anna Kiesewetter

You exist in a haze,

in that tepid nook between 

spring and summer, between

fragile light and heady warmth. 

You exist in daydreams,

in those too-good moments where 

you coax honeyed words 

down my throat, spoon feed me

beautiful lies, when really all I want

is to cocoon myself within the 

circle of your arms, to press my nose

to your cotton shirt and inhale 

your scent of warm rain 

and toasted grass. 

I like to pretend that this is forever, that

I’m different. I blink my eyes and marvel

that I’m here, that I’ve caught you in this 

space between seasons, where only

the two of us exist. But then I blink 

once more and, like clockwork, it’s done. 

As the flowers wither and fall, you fade

and I bleed out in pale corn-flower blue,

the color of dull ache and bitter tears 

and your unfathomable eyes.

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Anna Kiesewetter is an incoming freshman at Stanford University from Issaquah, Washington. She was a 2020 American Voices Medal nominee for the Scholastic Writing Awards, and her work is published or forthcoming in Polyphony Lit, Prometheus Dreaming, Rising Phoenix Review, Blue Marble Review, and elsewhere. A firm believer in the psychological nature of literature, she writes to explore human experience and perception.