Spring Crush
It’s early spring on our walk home from school
when my daughter tells me she’s in love
with the world. Last week it was a boy
with small, serious eyes and a glorious bowl cut,
but it seems she’s moved on, falling
for the world as she twirls in its sunlight
and our shadows douse the concrete below.
Should I aim to dissuade her? Must I explain
this world will leave her for dust, leave her
with the taste of rust on her tongue? But she smiles
and slips fingers through mine—a sweetness
not yet teased from her grip. Even those teens
who pack the sidewalk with trendy sneakers
and covert insecurities stop slap-boxing, pause
to let us pass. Nearly home, we spot blossoms
burning indigo and pink. A whirl of two squirrels
scrape up a tree. Better to take things slowly, I’d say,
but the girl splits off and sprints
the final block: sun-struck, smitten, a whip of
perfect limbs stretched to broken sky.
Jared Harél is the author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, Winner of the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (forthcoming from University of Nebraska Press, Sept. 2023) and Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018.) He’s been awarded the ‘Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize’ from American Poetry Review, the ‘William Matthews Poetry Prize’ from Asheville Poetry Review, and has new poems in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review and The SUN. Jared lives with his family in Westchester, NY. He’s on Instagram @jaredharel