Jordan Walker

In This Room

There is something about an Autumn wind

swept beneath mushroom caps, collecting 
in spores and spitting us out—
tiny parachutes of pappus.

Our limbs are loose
whirligigs; single-winged
and spiraling under rivering mounds
of flesh and collarbone.  
We guess who will stay
aloft the longest.

A chokeberry grows
from your mouth,
your chest erupts
in clusters of red anthers, 
my gangly knuckles ache 
and crack over you,
a mantle of soft belly and sinewy shoulders.

I am in awe of this change,
of this body
that was just a season ago
dark green elliptic leaves and white floret,
now hulling over my hips 
in heavy need.

In this room, we need not speak.
We drag our wooly mouths across
each other,
dandelions in our throats.
Our tongues 
twirl down thistles of hair
lapping at hayweed,
and suddenly we are children,
our fingers competing
for light on the body.

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Jordan Walker is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where they work as a graduate teaching assistant and instructor of creative writing.