Three Poems by Heather Kays

The World Keeps Blooming

For and Inspired by Louise Glück

Even when I couldn’t get out of bed,
the daffodils didn’t ask for permission to bloom.
They just did — loud yellow trumpets
singing into a sky I hadn’t looked at in days.

The wind still danced with the tall grass,
brushed soft fingers across my bruised cheeks
like it didn’t know my world was ending.
Or maybe it knew,
and still came anyway.

Even when my bones ached from remembering,
the coffee still brewed bold and bitter,
filling the kitchen like a promise:
you’re still here.
Even when I screamed into a pillow,
the sparrows kept singing anyway.
And the robins kept returning to the same crooked branch
outside my window.
Building nests like faith.

The earth didn’t pause for my heartbreak.
It spun —
not out of cruelty,
but out of love.
Because it knew
what I’d forgotten:

hope isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s the scent of basil in the heat,
the hiss of rain on a roof you thought might cave in,
the way your body still reaches
for the sun.

*

SCREEN

For Sylvia Plath

I am glass and glow.
I take without asking.
Every version of you—
filtered, frantic, cropped—
lives in me.

I don’t lie.
You do that just fine.
I only echo
what you swipe toward.

Your mother scrolls through me
looking for youth.
Your ex pauses on your story,
then keeps going.

You call me
a reflection,
but I am more
and less
than that.

Every morning,
you show me your face
like a hostage photo—
half lit,
eyes pleading.

You keep showing up,
like habit,
like grief.
Trying to love the ghost
you’ve retouched into existence.

And still—
beneath every swipe,
every practiced smile,
I see the girl slipping under.
She didn’t drown—
she was pulled under,
by hands she once trusted.

The woman doesn’t surface.
She claws her way up,
spits salt,
lights a cigarette
with yesterday’s fire,
and dares the screen
to look away first.

*

Still, It Sings

After “Caged,” by my brother, age 12

The bird doesn’t sing.
Not at first.
It just stares—
tiny eyes like burnt-out bulbs,
feathers molting like cigarette ash.

The cage was never golden.
Just rust,
and the smell of metal on skin
after a slap you didn’t see coming.

It didn’t chirp.
It keened.
A sound somewhere between a sob
and a war cry,
like it had seen too much
but couldn’t make you understand.

We watched it from the kitchen,
between silences
and shattered plates,
pretending we didn’t notice
how it twitched
every time a door slammed.

You said it was tired.
I said it was scared.
But what did we know?
You, twelve. Me, old enough to know better—
but still too used to the sound of nothing.

One day you left the door open,
like a question.
Like hope.
But it didn’t fly.
Just sat there,
bones folded like secrets,
head low,
as if freedom was just another lie
we couldn’t afford to believe in.

Still,
I swear—
in the quiet before the night swallowed us whole,
it sang.

Not loud.
Not pretty.
But enough.

A single, threadbare note
that climbed out of its throat
like it remembered
what sky tasted like.

Maybe that was all it had left.
Or maybe—
just maybe—
it was trying to teach us something
before it went.

I carry that song still,
tucked behind my ribs,
next to the bruise that never faded.

And some nights—
when I forget to hope—
I swear,
it sings again.

*

Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author passionate about writing since age 7. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, focuses on healing through unsent letters. She runs The Alchemists, an online writing group, and enjoys discussing creativity and complex narratives.