Upon learning that murder rates raise in the summer

I lodge a prayer beneath my tongue and a canister of pepper
spray in my sweatpants pocket; throw on a hoodie, suffer the heat.

July should come with a trigger warning, melted snow water
on every street corner instead of wolfish appetites with sharp teeth.

I beg the sky to stay grey a little longer, but even after I sealed
the old dryer vent where the mice got in, they still found ways

to fool the putty, elude the cold. I'm the only wall left standing
in this house of ruins. I am the wildfire and the bloom thereafter,

and I am trying to still my own birth, but the midwife insists
on tossing the windows open, boiling the water, tearing strips

of fresh linen for the blood. She bathes winter's womb from my limbs
until I am too pretty, too pert, too pink for a world that wants

to smudge what gleams. I once read that many fish change sex
as they age, and assume by many they mean female, by they age,

mean survival. The sun is up late tonight. Hibernation season wanes
with the crescent moon. Soon the clocks will spring forward, buds will shoot

toward sky. The crocus, the daffodil, the tulips next. How proud
they stand, how basked in amber, how unafraid to be so

unfurled. I'm almost jealous. Almost think peonies are invincible,
until a heavy rain, a heat warning, some man comes along with shears.


- Kait Quinn
@kaitquinnpoetry