The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson: 351 C. 1862

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson: ‘351′ c. 1862

Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Mary Bowles (about December 1858)

sunflowers

my first memory is of a forest of sunflowers

wandering in and being engulfed in thick stems

surrounded by yellow glowing down on me

not even reaching the petals

in the photograph of that day

there’s only a cluster of them

wedged between other plants

in a simple house garden

and I'm just outside the patch.

in my memory, i am a child of the forest

the flowers guide me as I navigate 

through their jungle of leaves

i am smiling up at the dazzling flowers

their blackholes drowning out the sky

but their luminescent color giving 

light to my path in lieu of the sun

in the photograph of that day

i am slumped in an infant’s posture

chubby inexperienced legs 

sprawled under me 

pouting forcefully at the lens

in the photograph, I am

a toddler playing in the dirt

I will become someone’s

new responsibility 

in my memory, I am 

a gleeful adventurer 

with sunflower caretakers

and ladybug companions

and my brain decided

that this was the 

first important event my life

the closest we have gotten to teleportation so far

If she could have any superpower

it would be teleportation,

so she could finally just

leave

But since the science of teleportation

is not quite advanced enough,

instead she wishes to be a 

ghost

She does not wish to be dead.

Simply to live in the afterlife,

interacting with the world where

no-one 

can disturb her

She wants very much,

at the least,

to exist in a realm

separate 

from the one she’s trapped in already.

So hopefully there is something 

at the end of the tunnel,

otherwise this would all be for 

nothing.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Mary Oliver, Red Bird