Lines on Spring: Excerpts from Alicia Cook's Poetry
Spring is a recurring motif throughout my four poetry collections: “Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately,” “I Hope My Voice Doesn’t Skip,” “Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back,” and “The Music Was Just Getting Good.” In these works, I capture the essence of the season through imagery and language. Here are excerpts that encapsulate the essence of spring as depicted in my writings.
The Music Was Just Getting Good
“Spring came and went,
but the showers didn’t relent.
Petals pressed between words I never said.
Rehearsed my dramatic,
cinematic exit from you
but I never found my moment;
and I always missed my cue.”
“Then time kept passing and spring arrived. That same tree I empathized with bloomed so brilliantly that endless petals covered the bark and filled in the gaps so much that you would never know it was grieving a limb all those months before. It was in front of that tree that I realized I no longer talked about you to my friends. Not everything that breaks needs to stay broken.”
“I was born in April but I was due in May.
My father says the cherry blossoms
clung to their branches
longer than usual that year
because they wanted to meet me
and blanket me in their petals
like springtime snow.”
“Stumbling backward instead of springing ahead.
The mind — a house of tripwires.
Triggered when it’s this warm in March.
Triggered when I can smell dew in the morning.
My nose begins to bleed but I don’t grab a tissue —
it’ll stop on its own eventually.
Everything stops on its own eventually”
“That’s something I’ve always secretly wished was true;
that there was only spring and fall, and me and you.”
“The world stopped spinning for a collection of time. No one was around to kill the dandelions. Suddenly, they were sprouting everywhere. Suddenly, we were admiring their colors. Suddenly, they weren’t weeds, they were flowers.”
“An odd
empty smile
grips a person
who is wondering
if the flowers
worry about death too.”
“In lieu of flowers, give me my innocence back so I can walk past a florist and smell romance and spring; not loss and oblivion. In lieu of flowers, build me a time machine or get the f-ck out.”
Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back
“The spring we met,
I was more wilt than bloom.
I’m not saying you saved me,
but your face and eyes and laugh
made me look back long enough to
think twice.”
I Hope My Voice Doesn’t Skip
“There is nothing remarkable about this photo of me
and two people I love smiling under my mother’s
favorite tree in the backyard. By the easy smiles on
our faces, I can tell this was the last early spring
before everything changed. That was the last photo
taken before everything changed.”
“My father returns with graveyard dirt under his nails.
He tells me, ‘It is not really Easter until you visit your dead.’”
Stuff I’ve Been Feeling Lately
“Seasons
have
patterns.
You’d be back.
And like winter’s
losing fight
against spring,
I’d thaw.”
“I am one who knows that even after
the coldest of winters,
spring will still arrive.”
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