See How the Hurtsickle Stays

In our humid perfume, or by it,
the sun steamed the husked prairie hillsides.
My palm in your palm was a plain wren, simple as earth
made dust by a wind—up and up—into unfiltered sky
and your eyes were big as ripe nectarines.

I noticed none of these things, could not smell
the pine for you were a heady pheromone. Our tent
was an idle curiosity, how we would bookmark into it.
There were other sounds than the gauzy rustle of small blue
flowers butting the nylon.

Is it enough to re-remember history? How I pinned
one cornflower, its proud head full of superstition,
right then to your collar. How blue it stayed.
How blue and brimming.

Look, I have planted them in the garden.
See how the hurtsickle stays.

Rhiannon Thorne's poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Midwest Quarterly, and The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She is the managing editor of cahoodaloodaling, a book reviewer at Up the Staircase Quarterly, and an editorial intern for Sundress Publications.