pandemic: even the nice days, we’re inside
The forest drifts in through the window, rising up the slope
from narrow water carving low points lower.
Once with you, a wading bird we watched,
waiting to see how close it would
come. Now that trail is gated by the threat of breath, too many
people too close, path sated and spilling over.
I am hungry for the touch of ferns,
for happenstance and a lost world of
coincidence I once felt standing all around me,
like a stand of trees in the city
Copyright © 2021 Arianne True. Originally published in The Madrona Project (vol. 2 no. 1, June 2021). Reprinted with permission of the author.
Arianne True
Arianne True was born on August 6, 1991, in the rural Pacific Northwest. She grew up in Seattle and was active in the local youth poetry scene. She is Chickasaw (enrolled) and Choctaw, chronically ill and disabled, neurodivergent, and a lesbian. She earned an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts.