One Part Pollen, One Part Nectar


 
 
 
Once upon a train station
I watched a couple embrace
 
with such sparkler-urgency
arrival or departure
 
didn’t matter.
Elsewhere on the platform
 
a little boy with a fistful of daisies,
dirt still fresh on the roots,
 
and a woman
not his mother, neither hand
 
reaching–
this is the way
 
the saddest metamorphosis
begins.
 
Ever since then
I’ve wanted the dazzling sun
 
to be seduced by heliotropes
and not always
 
the other way around.
 
 
~
 
 
Often longing
 
forks like the tongue of a hummingbird.
Often each path
 
offers its own dead ends. In other words
every old ache
 
is one part pollen
and one part nectar. Even now you’re
 
wonderfully misplaced
 
like my favorite bedtime story
 
read out loud in the morning.
 
 
~
 
 
The kindest thing I’ve ever done
was lie
 
about every person at that station
until you fell asleep.
 
Only then did I tell you
what happened to the boy.
 
 
 

Michael Schmeltzer was born in Japan and eventually moved to the US. He is the co-author of "A Single Throat Opens," a lyric exploration of addiction, and "Blood Song," a WA State Book Award finalist in poetry. His work can be found in Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, PANK, Split Lip Magazine, and Water~Stone Review, among others. He can be found procrastinating on Twitter at @mschmeltzer01