Recipe

Emerald-bladed side-eyes, half-cups of

Memory here and there, old buttons for teeth,

Bones as soft as blueberries. Cheap faded shirts,

Ghost fingers snapping in two. (I’m sorry,

I didn’t know they would break so easily!)

Charms on gifted bracelets clinking out

A warning or two. Scratchy knitted scarves,

Heaving wind chimes, blushing prayers,

Poems about sleep, the smell of a new car.

(Don’t forget to fish out the tiny pieces of

Eggshell from the bowl!) Lavender

Or something like it. Crossed fingers,

The corpses of coral, the sounds of

Hungry stomachs. Rings covered over in skin,

Dull kitchen knives, a melody on the flute

Bouncing off of crosses in an empty church.

A woman’s operatic pain, the bloodstains

On my mattress, nine buckets of wishful thinking.

(Common substitutes: the scattered fluff of dandelions,

Or pennies scooped from the bottoms of fountains.)

And the missing parts, a whole list of them!

Missing labels and letters and goodbyes,

Missing stitches and backbones and grandparents,

Missing blackberries from five birthdays ago,

Mushroom rings that never found me,

Sea monsters and half-forgotten friends and

People I touched and entire languages.

The final step is to search forever.

Cat M. is in love with a girl she briefly saw once in a museum. She writes poetry, fiction, songs, plays, and novels, and her work has been published in the literary magazine Sugar Pine under a different name. She was born and raised in Southern  California. An avid daydreamer, Cat will always hold fantasy  lose to her heart. 

The goal of her writing is to bring catharsis and comfort to herself and others.

Copyright © 2022 by Cat M.

Published by Orion's Beau