Yellowing by Heidi Seaborn

Yellowing

The poet wrote yellow plum.
I saw harvest moon,
your globe of limoncello,
the end of our marriage
swirling in liquor the color
of a highlighter underscoring
all that had gone wrong.

I had already known yellow skies,
the pulse of caution lights.
Had driven the hairpin
curve of disappointment.

But this picking the lock
of my ribcage—my body still
milky, still swollen with words
I needed to spill. This leaving me
with the door slam of marriage—
our yawning bed, everything
banking into a snowdrift.

The baby, a bit jaundiced
I thought when the poet
wrote yellow plum.
I held her to my breast,
her lips like a moth.

*

Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and author of PANK Poetry Prize winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, the acclaimed debut Give a Girl Chaos and Comstock Chapbook Award-winning Bite Marks. Recent work in Beloit Poetry Journal, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Diode, Financial Times of London, The Missouri Review, The Offing, ONE ART, The Slowdown and the Washington Post. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU and teaches at the Hugo House. heidiseabornpoet.com