by Michelle Bayman

You rustle the burlap
like a blanket so I start
to sing a made-up
lullaby as you tenderly
wrap up the bush
until no fuchsia or green
peeks through, only
the light, loose brown of burlap.

As you knot
the ends together,
closing the hood
over the last buds,
I twirl the biggest bloom—
its’ scent brings me
to a room we don’t own yet,
one that will never hear
me sing a lullaby.

After you say
the bloom is as big
as my face,
and in that room
I hear the ruffling of pages
in a book closing.

Michelle Bayman is a junior at Susquehanna University where she is a major in Creative Writing and a minor in Editing and Publishing. Although previously published in Outrageous Fortune, Variance, and Sanctuary, and with a forthcoming publication in Catfish Creek, she also finds pleasure in reading the craft of rejection letters. When not lost between the lines of poems or exploring the unending universe in science fiction novels, she and her fiancée enjoy planning their evolution.