Hannah James
I do not know the name of a flower that isn’t a rose,
or a tulip, or something as starkly obvious
as a sunflower, helianthus annuus–
the blooming flowerheads bend
to meet the rising sun, then modulate west,
always following, or so they thought,
but once they mature,
their circadian rhythm changes,
they stop tracking
and become engrossed in the east–
I never think to look to the wild grass
where I tread, to pause and take in something foreign
growing irrespectively,
and ask for its name,
maybe tomorrow I will
pray to nothing but the pulse and
silence the strings of violins playing in me,
so as to not reverberate into astronomical dusk,
the sky submerged in violet, brooding and waiting
anxiously for the shadow of night to fall, I will track
the last trace of gold draped over the river
in the distance, and most of all not miss you
long before you leave, as you laugh
right across from me
Author: Hannah is a Creative Writing and Law student at QUT. She enjoys unravelling the human experience in all its wonderful and frustrating complexity through fiction and poetry.
Editors: Willow Ward and Hannah Vesey