By Rhiannon McGavin
Any tenderness I know, you learned same as me,
sounding the sharp words out until you
could hold them. We’re still latchkey tomatoes,
dirty vines tangled as hair running over dry
earth, grown where we can, no trellis, no neat guide
for our wanderings but each other. This smooth
grammar of lip gloss and borrowed shirts,
heads wild out the car windows, screaming
inside a good song, stripping down to go
jump right through a riptide, that push and pull another
knowledge. When I’m deep in the waves I can
look at you treading these currents. Who else teaches you
manners? How to cartwheel, to say
no and mean it, but we can fall & fall & find
out. Oh best best friends, split this
pomegranate and an hour with me, call me when
quiet is too thick to cut, call me
rabid with gossip, call me when you get home.
Sweethearts, did you know friendship & freedom carry
the same root? Did you know that with water,
under enough sun, even the most scraggle-tooth
vegetable scrap can grow back again & again?
What a garden here, what a syntax,
xylem poised as a group chat, us scallions,
yellow-gold beets, melon radish, holy basil, us
zucchini blossoms teaching the ground to laugh.