Folks would talk about it,
and even after I lived
in that mountain town
months, a year, even after
getting close with the girl
from the pharmacy,
guys from the woods, I did
not know.

I waited to somehow divine
what it was. Be invited. Still
I imagine a great expanse,
a meadow, high above the town,
of tiny flowers, like lovers
on their backs, looking up.

Copyright © 2017 Jill Osier. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review (Summer 2017).