Crush/Wound
To set fire to veins is to scorch all fruits off the earth. A succulent desert is born. I eat ice cream every night, thinking, this is how you love in the middle of a dry season. Instead, the sugarmilk dissolves into water, into weight, and suddenly, we are no longer girl but ghostwoman. She wears her own topography, carves and decorates and hides all that she is. In an ancient mother tongue, this would mean supernatural grace. In this world, it only means, caution,
danger ahead.
Without
Absence is heavy when the landline rings at midnight and there, in the hollow silence, vibrates rage on the voice machine. Absence amplifies in the beginning of summer when all your friends celebrate in cataclysmic fashion in their signature youthful rebellion. Absence plateaus into a more permanent sadness come autumn. Absence is the one. Absence is the best friend turned heartbreak turned death because no one taught you the importance of time and momentum until adulthood. Absence is learning everything on your own.
Absence is–
In The Midst of Healing
I.
I need to shut up before I disappear once again. At the center of myself will always be ghost. Sweetness says to slow down more often. My tongue doesn’t know how to speak these mindful languages, so she invents poetic emergencies to keep her busy.
II.
Aloneness is allowing myself to be okay. To be more than that. This mood so exotic, I try to liken it to the history of my mothers. The first, always praying. The second, always wandering. The third, now working beyond the man. All these lives swell up. This manyed something gets to be too heavy sometimes.
III.
The assemblage of my disorders is not to count all the ways I fail to love. But to continue to face the sun with enthusiasm and let that light feed my heart. To flirt between golden & not because yes, even this darkness contributes to my overall essence.
Taylor Marie Nunez has an MFA in Writing from VCFA. She has had work published in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Half Mystic Journal, and Ghost City Press. Her debut poetry book, I Bloom in the Dark, will be out December 2025 through Querencia Press.