virginia laurie

WATCHER

The town that smelled like honeysuckle, fresh buttered popcorn
and cut grass is becoming must and cinnamon, a new flavor of
white in the nipping cold creeping up the stairs, pull back the paint 
and fill our door with gravity, Swiss it. But it is happy, the trudging, 
these snail trails we approach, the daily little aches. We’ve got an 
ant problem and the laundry won’t spin right, but there’s time left 
and drinks, whole cookbooks to be made. New cats, no sleeves and 
the eerie yellow space around your shoulders in a short story, something 
rich about to happen, jewel tones, depression glass, pattern, and poetry. 

You look at someone, suddenly, at a party, in your room, and you see them 
differently. You realize, They will write the next poems of my life. 
They have so many edges and colors, They are unstable stars sweating light, 
They are the torchbearers and talismans. They are the muse, and I — I am 
a watcher first. I am amused. I do my best to imitate. I do my best 
to make it art.

VIRGINIA LAURIE IS AN ENGLISH MAJOR AT WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY WHOSE WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED IN LANDLOCKED, PHANTOM KANGAROO, CATHEXIS NORTHWEST PRESS AND MORE. HTTPS://VIRGINIALAURIE.COM/