Tomorrow I'll wake
from dreams absent
of your voice to my
queen of the night—
grown from a cutting
of yours—in bloom,
and only think of its
scent filling the dark
house. I won't want
to tell you that they're
pollinated by moths,
and others that smell
of rotting flesh by flies.
So much is fashioned
from lack. But I won't
make a metaphor of it,
just cradle the flower in
my hand like a child's
head, grown heavy as
they nod off to sleep.
It's Perseids season
again, when a great
darkness pours out
stars; though they're
imperceptible here in
the city, we counted
dozens once, craning
necks beside an old
logging road, the first
break we'd found in
the redwoods. Earlier,
we ripped cardboard
open to free a yellow
cloud of wasps, so we
wonder, can they see
all this light falling?
Do they even know
they've left the box?
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett is the author of Mud in Our Mouths (Northwestern University Press, 2025) and Look Alive (Cowles Poetry Book Prize, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2021), along with numerous chapbooks, most recently Lossland (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press). Her poetry can be found in Fugue, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for the Whiting Award–winning LGBTQIA2S+ literary journal and press Foglifter.