Now you wander through my imagination,

your fingers stained with the pollen of dead flowers.

Perhaps it began with those who turned an ear

away from the wind’s carrying of my calling—

each syllable dispersed like seeds

over ground that had no germination.

No mortal love has asked of me so much;

it breaks me into form.

O art, my sin.

Marni Fraser

10.09.2026

IV:00 A.M.

It refused to be breakfast.

It refused to be pie.

It refused so completely

it forgot not to die.

This is the promise:

hesitant,

half-whispered,

never rescinded.

What causes the sudden change

from green

to the tarnish of spoons?

So much carried

before knowing its name.

So much buried—

that still knew me.

And I,

still visible,

wave back.

The insects come and praise what they see,

oh how drunk on the short-lived velvet of her.

She likes their little hymns and lets them hover,

but praise is just sunshine with a tongue;

it stays awhile, then goes off somewhere else.

We praise the flower standing alone,

call her strong when nobody brings light.

Somewhere beneath the praise, she thirsts.

No living thing was made to earn its tending,

nor beauty meant to function as a ransom.

Enough of the half-truths,

and of the missing truth.

Enough of it arriving barefoot,

then three days late to boot,

and with blood on its feet.

Or was it only your throat, speaking a language it hadn’t been given yet?

the natural world, indifferent and immense;

the sea not needing to know my depths,

the trees seasonally meeting with death,

the creatures innocent of our despair.

And across the ground

lie all the things

once mistaken

for belonging.

so deep into the night

the birds forget their names,

the night birds tangled with the bats,

winged things stitched into my hair,

your mouth still near my ear,

first, the silhouette.

Then the eternal.

Then the laugh—

startlingly sweet—

then the strange friendship

which had no proper name

and entered everything.

And still we lift it to our mouths.

And we call the rot a blessing.

And still, we bite near the bruise

and let the sweetness lie to us.

I told my love: I cannot stay alive

without my stories fastened to my eyes,

without my stories waking in my hands.

The world extends its help in measured spoons.

I only want my art. I want what’s mine.