She Reads Me Walt Whitman
because I have to for class in seven hours. I shut my eyes soft as moth’s wings, her voice yellow like mulberries blooming from her silkworm lips. I inch nearer the realm of sleep, awake enough to tiptoe around my own thoughts, to swallow the other poet’s words pouring from her mouth. What is it then between us? Whitman says as I curl up beside her, cocooned, not knowing if I’ll be able to fly by morning.
Separation Anxiety Most days, you wake in wonder of your love, her smile soft beneath the blankets, and you love and you love and you love and you love. Her smiles taste like sunshine and you love sunshine and you love being alive and you’re alive and sunshine tastes like coffee, rich and bitter and blinding, reminding you that you’re alive and three years ago you didn’t think you would be. But she reminds you that you have blood instead of embalming fluid when three years ago, you didn’t have her to keep you from the embalming fluid, to steady the blood flowing in your veins and you try not to keep her but when she leaves, it feels like you’re drowning, flowing out of your own veins and most days, you wake and wonder why it always feels like drowning beneath blankets of your love.
Ashlyn Sharp is an undergraduate student of Creative Writing at Utah State University, where she interns with Sink Hollow Literary Journal. In 2018, she was named a finalist for the Swenson Legacy Poetry Contest, and has work appearing in Whale Road Review and Honey and Lime Lit. Follow her on Twitter @ashjenn6.