Nocturnal Rumination

by Lydia Wright

i have never been a proper lady. my feet are too big
and my hands
are too calloused. i freely admit i am guilty
of my sins,
lost like a seagull who circles the bay
in winter
when nobody’s
there.

i am a perpetual winter evening
when the farmhouse lights extinguish
one by one,
an apparition ambling down
a lesser traveled highway
toward the broken-down buildings, the end
of the world.

i’m prone to wander. my prayers
do not float.
i’m a thousand year old city
lost
beneath the sea. my eyelids are heavy,
and sometimes i cry.
i have good intentions, my hands
just shake.

sometimes i hear my bones breaking apart, and
the nape of my neck smells like
funeral flowers. i love,
but i kill–
my mind is made up.
in a past life i may have been
a tree.

the loveliest sadness pursues me at night
when i hear the wind blow, and i’m
wild again– a danger perhaps
to myself most of all,
drawn like a moth to the last
burning candle
on earth.

forgive me if my speech is obscure. i talk
about ghosts in my sleep. i am one death away
from continuous flight
through the dark which pervaded the cosmos
before
there was light.

###

Lydia Wright is a serial dreamer, artist, and writer who resides in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Believing first and foremost in the power of the written word, Lydia attributes her passion for poetry to a single grade school poetry lesson which has served as the catalyst to a life she now devotes to translating personal experiences into poems that will resonate with others. On the rare occasion when her head is not in the clouds, Lydia can be found in the woods, haunting the dimly lit corners of various local coffee shops, and generally observing the world around her. Her writing often possesses a dream-like, romantic quality, incorporating visually and emotionally captivating language that aims to pluck the collective heartstrings of humanity. Lydia writes best with a cat on her lap.