pull my hair

in my dream there is a spiral staircase
climbing and climbed upon
panic without method
on waking/my feet
still carry
me up into floating
out of breath

but your hands

then

gentle spring cotyledons reaching
insistent thorns holding hips in the briar
tug my sweater from below
switch me places

a step below you
i lean against your knees
you take my hair in your hands
the hair that saved me
that almost killed me
that ritualizes my days
as you braid

i am held

sugars

if fruit is of labor
if labor is of body
if body is of love
is fruit not everywhere

in sickness and in health
we are surrounded by fruit

fruit is the celebration
the celebration on the end of a branch
the end of a reach
the end of the season
a celebration of having been
an excitement and an offering
a self offering
a knowing of the way we eat
the way we eat each other eventually
always
mushroom chitin morphing on the dappled dance floor
ghost pipes smoking beneath old pines
knees crackling enough

the peaches drop fat rain
round the yellowjackets in the front yard
the slender samaras pirouetting in the back
the spruce by the dock
chuckling in the sun dropping scale and bract
by the paw of scurrying farmers
growling and sighing as the afternoon grows cumulonimbus

may all be this way
may we all grow into full fruiting bodies of ourselves
may we know when to get soft
when to bruise under a grateful and gentle thumb
when the time is right
so that our pits and shells may mushroom
our neighbors paws sporulate
eat our houses
topsoil our clearing
become garden for our kin

Emma Loomis-Amrhein is a trans naturalist who is particularly enamored of birds. Her debut collection of poetry, evening primroses, (April 2021) is available from Recenter Press. Her poems also reside in Hoxie Gorge Review, Hematopoiesis Press, Recenter Press, and Sheepshead Review. She lives with her partner in rural, southern Ohio.