This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2019 Spring Print edition. It was awarded the 2019 Best Poetry Prize by Guest Judge Spencer Reece.
Illustration by Cameron Lee
after Tracy K. Smith
Asleep, we breathe little cuts into the morning
and it bleeds lemony blue light. This opening–
this movement of your shoulder, the angles
of the shelves and tables sharpening themselves
into reality. The world is opening too.
How miraculous the sun. How sweet
it must think us, to celebrate it’s coming
this way, softly, every day.
Every day. To ourselves and one another. And what
if the morning is neither opening nor closing? Just
another entrance of light, another way for the sun
to needle into our cells? An injury?
That, too, we would welcome.