Like a flower that knows it will return to seed, I have in me the presence of a past which pigments the future. Even when my husband, after churning me into a white buttered heat, dissolves into sleep, I lie awake and feel each seed from me fall back into a form of forgetfulness or formlessness or remorse I cannot tell. Even after the thunderstorm, which shakes the house as if it were a liquid thing, I wait and watch the boomerang of thoughts (and time) fly back to encircle and enclose until this concentric flight creates in me a clean heart oh god.

sweeping up
the dust of June bugs—
summer dreams

—Previously appears in Contemporary Haibun Online (Volume 2, Number 4, December 2006); republished here by author’s permission

Bio: Marjorie Buettner