The Letters Of Emily Dickinson

The Letters of Emily Dickinson

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

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

𝚃. 𝚂. 𝙴𝚕𝚒𝚘𝚝, 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚂𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏 𝙹. 𝙰𝚕𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝙿𝚛𝚞𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚔 (𝟷𝟿𝟷𝟻)

mary oliver, the pond