Tara Westmor

when we fall out of morning

The morning was a chokehold, August rush of sunflower
fields and rows of giant heads worshipping yellow

heat. You and I laid our bodies down into the stilted shade
of the tall flowers. We raised our heads to each other.

There were moments in this first love when I thought summer
would cost me everything. I’d wake at 3:47 a.m.

and find my luck spent. During this long morning, our bodies
were still new and you had written letters professing your love

in another language, a secret. In the golden forest,
each petalled head overlooked the loud cicadas clinging

to tall stalks, my fingers fumbling into knots, our feet kicking
at the dry dirt. I wanted every part of you but instead,

you wrung your fist around the neck of a sunflower and pulled hard,
while the rest of them looked on and ignored us like we were nothing.

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Tara Westmor is an anthropologist poet, raised in Dayton, Ohio. She received her MFA in poetry from New Mexico State University and is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of California-Riverside. She has work published and forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, Muzzle, The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Hunger Mountain, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, The Sink Review and elsewhere.