PAPER CRANE

Fledgling // Ode to Internalized Paint

by Rosalie McCracken
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Fledgling 

Carrying a wicker basket
full of kudzu and buttercups,
molten drops of sun and forest, 
I trudge through pavement,
when a sound seizes
my ears like honeycomb-
sapped fruit flies.

Croaking melodies into air.

Wings like wet paper soaked 
in sun-baked leaves, void eyes
staring up at me blankly. 
Twig legs splayed like baby 
doe, awaiting mother. 

So paltry, I could cup my hands
around it like a teapot.

​
So sanguine, I almost spot 
a tiny golden heart,
twinkling through feathers.
Those saucer eyes.
Those birchwood limbs.
I will wait, sitting 
on the cracked asphalt, 
ears attentive.

But, silver clouds exhale,
trees churning in their grasp.
A storm rolling, oozing 
grey into soft purple. 
I must make my way
back home.

My ears take one, final look.
Croaking requiems into air.


Ode to Internalized Paint

Distempered the carcass among these walls--
emulsed to papered coats of pink and teal, eggshell
relics, encrusted colors that I painted over. 
Between those sheets is another dead notion. 

This layer is pink, antediluvian (before the flood) 
I’m wearing paisley dresses to school, a bow-gibbous,
bejeweled, inhaling some sweetmeats on monkey bars. 
And it reminds me of bliss. 

The second skin was teal. It came in siroccos
of itchy jeans and sinew curtains choking barbie-
girl heads. Blues smothers the fire of pink girls. 

An eidolon brush eats at my hand now. 
Eggshelled shame. I’m tittering on them. 
My walls, they whisper, accusatory: Internalized paint. 

Rosalie McCracken is a poet from Clemson, South Carolina. Outside of writing, you will find her reading, drawing, rock-hunting in local rivers, and playing Dungeons and Dragons with friends. 

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