You Once Told Me I was Beautiful

In the spring
when stems were new,
blossoms bright
against the mid-March sun;

we blazed together
during summer,
blown by tipsy winds,
electrified by stars;

you still held me
as dew tipped the grass
in frosted-silver droplets,
and gold hung from my arms;

but then the leaves fell,
as did the temperature,
as did your eyes, your smile;

I suppose you shivered
at the sight of naked branches,
a strange fragility,

but darling, did you not know
that a new spring would come,
that I would bloom again,
thrusting through crusted earth;

you see I am a perennial,
back every year, lovely, fresh—
she is just an annual
and will be gone by season’s end.

An Avalanche of Poetry

a poem gathers
          words
tumbling
at breakneck speed,
leveling everything in its path
until each stanza stacks
like disheveled cords of firewood
one atop another,
sides heaving with panted breaths
at the bottom of the page.

Arvilla Fee teaches English Comp for Clark State College and is the managing editor for the San Antonio Review. She’s been published in numerous presses including Contemporary Haibun Online, Calliope, North of Oxford, Right Hand Pointing, Rat’s Ass Review, Mudlark, & others. Her poetry books, The Human Side (2022) and This is Life (2023), are available on Amazon. Arvilla has an awesome husband and five children (having recently adopted their 3-year-old foster child). She loves reading, writing, photography, traveling–and never leaves the house without a snack and a bottle of water (just in case!). Her favorite quote in the whole world is this: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau